USModernist® Radio is underwritten by The Brent R. Harris Charitable Trust, restorer of several Modernist houses including Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann Desert House in Palm Springs, and by Diane Bald and The Budman Family, restoring significant architecture in Toronto, Los Angeles, Malibu and Palm Springs.
Here are all our past shows! Or listen to them straight from our library.
Listen to one of America's top-rated architecture podcasts as the USModernist® Radio crew talks and laughs with fascinating people who own, create, love, and hate Modernist architecture, the most controversial houses and buildings in the world. DWELL rated USModernist Radio as the number 2 architecture podcast!
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Past architecture guests include Jeanne Gang, Bjarke Ingels, Daniel Libeskind, Helena Arahuete, Barbara Bestor, Moshe Safdie, Tom Kundig, Harry Bates, Peter Bohlin, Alan Hess, Peter Gluck, Robert Rubin, Blair Kamin, Barry Bergdoll, Myron Goldfinger, Kenneth Frampton, Katie Swenson, Bob Ivy, Jen Masengarb, Angie Brooks + Larry Scarpa, Gisue Hariri, Sekou Cooke, Alexandra Lange, Paul Goldberger, Inga Saffron, Jim Olson, Sarah Susanka, Raymond and Dion Neutra, Eric and Susan Saarinen, and many more.
Past musical guests include Pink Martini, Ari Shapiro, China Forbes, Madeleine Peyroux, Judy Carmichael, Toni Tennille, Stacey Kent, Jane Monheit, Nneena Freelon, Diane Schuur, Noel Paul Stookey, Brenda Lee, Jennifer Warnes, Ann Hampton Callaway, Lucy Wijnands, Monika Ryan, Lenore Raphael and Howard Alden, Eliane Elias, Halie Loren, Marilyn Scott, Cheryl Bentyne, Janis Siegel, Storm Large, Kate Earl, Darius Brubeck, Maria Maldaur, Claire Martin, Robin McKelle, Bria Skonberg, Sophie Milman, Lucy Woodward, Heather Rigdon, Tierney Sutton, Diana Panton, Don Most, Judy Carmichael, Linda Eder, and Peter Lamb and the Wolves.
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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 woefully underpaid staff have won 20 local, state, and national awards, He appears in the architecture documentaries Frey II and New England Modernism by acclaimed filmmaker 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. The podcast began in 2015, based in Raleigh NC, and has done remotes from Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Sarasota, London, New York, and New Canaan CT. Guest Prep Tips.June 8 #460/Children of Genius: Jennifer Lapidus + Jenny Jacks Shreve + Musical Guest Stacey Kent
June 1 #459/Tom Phifer + Alistair Gordon + Jeanie Bryson
May 25 #458/
Elizabeth Gordon was editor-in-chief of House
Beautiful. In April 1953 she published an influential and controversial
editorial that rocked the architecture world, presenting Modernism as
uncomfortable, impractical, and like communism a threat to American
cultural values. We’ll talk with author Monica Penick, author of the
definitive book on Gordon, 2001’s Tastemaker. Next up, Alison Fisher
just closed a wildly successful exhibition at the Art Institute of
Chicago on Bruce Goff, an architect who made Frank Lloyd Wright look
restrained. Wrapping up, Naama Gheber is a jazz vocalist with four
albums and a voice critics have compared to Peggy Lee. May 18 #457/Dublin's Modernist US Embassy:
Onera Foundation Panel with Cormac Murray + Norman McGrath + Christen
Johansen + Laurence Laforgue
On this special edition of USModernist taped live earlier this
year at the Onera Foundation in New Canaan CT, we explore US
diplomacy through Modernist architecture with three guests: Dublin
architect Cormac Murray gives a talk on John Johansen’s US Embassy in
Dublin; legendary photographer Norman McGrath, who shot that building
soon after it opened, and architect Christen Johansen, son of John
Johansen, discusses family legacy.
New York architect Tom Gluck of GLUCK takes us behind the scenes
of projects from prefab high-rises in Manhattan to his Tower House in
upstate New York. Nick Ferrell brings the history of postwar modern
design in Modeline of California: Pioneer of Modern Lighting,
with lamps that have inspired designers for decades. Dallas architecture
critic Mark Lamster gets us updated on the preservation of IM Pei’s City
Hall in Dallas. And later on, Grammy-winning Miami singer Jon Secada.
May 11 #456/Tom Gluck + Nick Ferrell + Mark Lamster + Musical Guest Jon Secada
