US Modernist Radio - Architecture You Love

We're revisiting conversations with two special guests who have passed away since these interviews were recorded — architect Paul Rudolph's partner Ernst Wagner and Frank Lloyd Wright's grandson, architect Eric Lloyd Wright.  Ernst Wagner died in 2024 at 81. A Swiss exchange student who came to New York in 1970, he met architect Paul Rudolph and the two became lifelong partners both in architecture and in business, co-fo...

In another of our wildly popular series, Children of Genius, we talk with family of famous architects, starting with Jennifer Lapidus, granddaughter of Morris Lapidus who reshaped Miami with hotels like the Fontainebleau. Next, Jenny Jacks Shreve, daughter of Arkansas architect Ernie Jacks, who worked on the Kennedy Center with Edward Durell Stone and the Case Study Houses with Craig Ellwood.  Later, returning musical guest, S...

Acclaimed architect Tom Phifer builds around light, with three decades designing buildings that make walls feel invisible.  Author Alastair Gordon has written more than 28 books and knows all the midcentury Modern houses in the Hamptons that shaped American architecture.  Jeanie Bryson spent decades as a jazz vocalist, sharing stages with Grover Washington Jr., Kenny Burrell, and Etta Jones.  Having a famous but...

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 successf...

On this special edition of USModernist taped live earlier this year at the Onera Foundation in New Canaan CT,  we explore 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, an...

New York architect Tom Gluck of GLUCKplus, son of architect Peter 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 Modernist lighting design in Modeline of California: Pioneer of Modern Lighting, with lamps that have inspired...

Imagine doing Modernist preservation – in a war zone.  Dmytro Soloviov documents Ukraine's modernist architecture.  Ben Wever cares for one of America's modernist treasures, the Miller House in Columbus, Indiana. Hallie Swenson uncovers the stories of San Diego Modernism, and architect Robert Stone brings new desert Modernism to life. ...

We've dug into the podcast vault for the story of Star Trek's furniture.  Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek launched a franchise in 1966 and is still going strong 60 years later. Sequels, movies, toys, fan films - there's just no end to Star Trek's bright, progressive, optimistic future where Earth has transcended national and international politics. Something architecture fans may have missed, and we certainly did, is that Star Tr...

Architects Carin Carlson and Tim Mitchell from Hennebery Eddy Architects restore mid-century and Mission 66–era architecture. Anthony Alofsin, one of the world's leading authorities on Frank Lloyd Wright, joins us to talk about his new book, Frank Lloyd Wright's Bogk House and reveals his new, famous cousin.  Paige Figenbaum, Executive Director of the Nevada Preservation Foundation, tells us about Vegas mo...

The venerable magazine Architectural Record is one of the most influential design publications in the world, clocking in 135 years of extraordinary coverage.  You can see all their issues at usmodernist.org/index-ar. Today we'll explore one of their editors, Lawrence Kocher, with Luis Pancorbo and Ines Martin Robles.  We'll talk with Steven Hurtt on The Urban Design Legacy of famed critic Colin Rowe, and we'll hear about ...

First up, for our concrete fans, art critic and author Blake Gopnik looks inside modernism through his book, Brutalist Interiors.  Holland Murphy solves the mystery of a house in Dallas. From there, we head to St. Louis, where Pam Sanfilippo of the Eero Saarinen-designed Gateway Arch National Park shares how Saarinen's soaring 630-foot monument endures for millions of visitors.  And we wrap up with the Rolling Stones of s...