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Host and Executive Producer George Smart, one dark and stormy night in 2007, started what has become USModernist®, the largest open digital nonprofit educational archive for Modernist residential design in the world. George and his intrepid team of wildly dedicated volunteers and staff have won 16 local, state, and national awards, including AIA Institute Honors for Collaborative and Professional Achievement, the AIA's highest award for non-architects. He appears in the 2020 architecture documentary Frey II by Jake Gorst.

Announcer, co-host, and engineer Tom Guild, legendary Raleigh FM DJ, grew up in a Durham Modernist house. He was on WRDU and WQDR back when humans actually played vinyl records over the airwaves using something called radio. Over the years, Tom recorded and mixed hours of top-notch audio including Porsche By Design for the NC Museum of Art. He met Mick Jagger. He has not met Frank Gehry. The security code for the show's recording studio, SoundTrax, is 8675309.

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USModernist® Radio is underwritten by Modernist Realtor Angela Roehl.

George and Tom pack up this week to head out to Palm Springs California for Modernism Week. Every February, they have a huge architecture and design festival and for the last seven years, except for the pandemic, USModernist has been there interviewing keynote speakers plus special guests poolside at the USModernist compound, aka the swanky Hotel Skylark. If you are into mid-century Modern, Modernism week is a joyous all-you-can-view festival of Modernist architecture, lectures, martinis, art galleries, shopping, nonprofit benefit events, architecture documentary premieres, amazing parties, brilliantly curated house tours, detailed art and architecture exhibits, and did we say, martinis? Each year USModernist takes 35 architecture fans for a curated experience of this wonderful public festival.  We’re  full for 2022, but if you’d like to come with us in 2023, drop George note at george@usmodernist.org,  Today we're excited to introduce four really interesting design professionals, including author and architectural historian Catherine Zipf, architect and author Bryan Toepfer, preservation professional Tim Cannan, and the architect of the iconic Darth Vader House in Houston, Lynn Spears.

It’s not easy being an architect. Make a living running an architecture practice can be tough. Just getting through design school is grueling, and then there's years of internship and employment detailing utility closets - while sitting in a thoughtfully beautiful but completely open office - where everyone can hear and see everything you’re saying and doing. Once out on your own, clients who want imaginative design solutions are hard to find, especially in smaller cities. The money is not great. Design isn’t enough to sell your work.  Standing out in the field of architecture is also who you know, how well you sell, and how well build your brand.  We talk today with architecture communications and marketing experts Liz Kubany, Iva Kravitz, Sara Kolata, and Mark LePage. Later, special musical guests Tape Five with Henrik Wager.