Us Modernist Radio - Architecture You Love

As New Yorkers grew more prosperous in the 1960’s, they wanted to escape to the Hamptons of Long Island, a place at the time of mostly farmland – and where summer is a verb.  After working briefly for Philip Johnson, architect Norman Jaffe set up his own practice and within a few years everybody who was anybody in New York society wanted a Jaffe house.  Known for meticulous design and detail, and unrelenting creativity, Jaffe soon became top gun in Hamptons Modernism. But by 1993, Jaffe was stricken with prostate cancer, an unhappy marriage, and profound disillusionment from affluent and demanding clients who often refused to pay what they owed.  It did not end well.  Joining us today in our continuing series, Children of Genius, is his son, architect and artist Miles Jaffe. 

Returning guest Frances Anderton has been telling stories and distilling ideas about design, architecture, and the cityscape of Los Angeles in print and broadcast media and at public events since 1991. Born and raised in Bath, England, Frances earned a degree in architecture at the University College of London. After serving as associate editor at Architecture Review, during which she was exposed to Los Angeles’s modernist wonders, she moved to the States, where she became the host of the wildly popular public radio program DnA: Design and Architecture. Her latest project is the book Common Ground: Multifamily Housing in Los Angeles.  She’s on the board of Modernism Week and is a frequent speaker on architecture around the country. 

It’s our Valentine's Day show, and what could be better than being in love?  Oh man, your brain is on a euphoric, crazy, often stupid, out of your mind focus on someone or some building that lights you up.  You can’t stop checking messages, you can’t stop googling.  Your heart is racing, and your body is a circus of feel-good chemicals.  Dopamine revs you up, and serotonin falls, taking your rational old self right into Hallmark card territory – and cutting your appetite.  Adrenaline and nor-epinephrine kick in, then oxytocin like a big teddy bear, comes in for the cuddle.  Are we talking about people, or Modernist architecture?  Today it’s both, with three couples merging their personal and professional passions.  First up, curator Sascha Feldman and architect Jacob Esocoff, and interior architects Christine Stucker and James Veal.  Later, music from the fjords with Norwegian jazz couple Heidi Skjerve and Daniel Formo.

Topeka Kansas is the home of the famous Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education that ruled against segregation, it’s where Annette Bening and Katrina of Katrina and the Waves grew up.  It’s where Wil Wheaton of Star Trek used to party with Penn Gillette.   It’s where Dr. Phil started … a health club…. with his dad in 1971, well before being discovered by Oprah when the beef industry sued her.  And it’s the home of Plains Modern, a small but intrepid group battling to save Kansas’s modernist heritage, specifically one particular state office building.  Joining us today are architect and professor Michael Grogan of Plains Modern and attorney Paul Post. 

Architecture is a tough field, one of the most demanding in terms of academic work.  Once you graduate, a Masters Degree in something else is usually needed.  Then entry level pay is seldom great, and everyone, we mean everyone – is a critic.  Back in the 20th century, when Modernism had it’s heyday, the small number of black architects had it even harder, yet - they quietly created homes and buildings across America that with a few exceptions, like Paul Williams, rarely got any fame or press.  White people don’t think of midcentury modern being in Black neighborhoods or created by Black architects – but there’s actually quite a lot.  Today’s guest Jerald Cooper created the wildly popular Hood Century Instagram account seeking out Black-designed Modernist architecture, starting in his own town of Cincinnati.

Los Angeles architect Ray Kappe went on his own in 1954, completing dozens of Modernist houses and teaching. After serving as Founding Chairman of the Department of Architecture at Cal Poly Pomona, Kappe resigned in 1972 and started the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-ARC) which is the Hogwarts of architecture, turned out several thousand graduates, and is considered one of the top architecture schools in the country. Ray died in his 90’s in 2019, but joining us from Los Angeles is his wife and SCI-ARC co-founder Shelly Kappe and their son, Finn Kappe. Later on, jazz from the UK with Claire Martin.

If your Mom or Dad is an architect, architecture gets into your DNA whether you like it or not, and one day, it’s gonna come out.  For one amazing renaissance woman, an artist, writer, investment banker, film producer, tattoo artist agent, and economic development consultant, she had to go all the way to Iowa to buy her dream house - by Frank Lloyd Wright - and now she owns it, at least legally.  As all Wright owners eventually discover, pretty soon the house owns you. Joining us is the new buyer of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Alsop House in Oskaloosa Iowa, Mia Reed, daughter of famed Florida/North Carolina architect Chuck Reed.

Joining us today is Los Angeles architect Steven Ehrlich of Ehrlich Yahai Rhee Chaney.  Just like we preserve Wright and Neutra and Schindler and Lautner now, in the future we’ll be working to save Modernist houses by this 40-person firm, honored with over 150 awards including the AIA National Firm Award and 9 national AIA design awards. Later on in the show, music with Dutch jazz vocalist Laura Fygi!

Kicking off things for 2023 is Lee Bey, Chicago architecture critic,  photographer for the new book Who Is the City For? with Blair Kamin, and the author of Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side.  Later on, we turn up the heat with grillmaster Greg Sages, also the Executive Director of The Philip Johnson Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut. 

Since the 1950’s, the US Government has hired Modernist architects like Edward Durell Stone, John Johansen, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Richard Neutra, and more recently Kieran Timberlake to design US Embassies all over the world.  Modernism most clearly expresses the idea of freedom and these buildings are a showcase for America.  But as Dr. Phil might say, “how’s that working for us?” Joining us are Angel Dizon, who supervised $2B worth of construction projects for the US State Department and is now with the GSA - and returning podcast guest Mina Chow, architecture professor at USC and producer of the documentary Face of a Nation: What Happened to the World’s Fair?  Later on, musical guest Oleta Adams. 

It’s our holiday show on USModernist Radio!  Co-hosting with George and Tom is Raleigh architect Erin Sterling Lewis, with McGill University professor Sarah Moser on glamourous Modernist fantasy cities we drool about in glossy architecture magazines, and later on, special musical guest, the legendary Brenda Lee, to rock us yet again around the Christmas tree!

The American Institute of Architects, or AIA, is the leading professional association in the US, and USModernist Radio was there for their national conference last June in Chicago, where George talked with Katie Swenson of MASS Design Group, known for emotionally powerful buildings like the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. After that, George visits with Kira Gould, a communications strategist, author, and cohost of the podcast Design the Future who was awarded honorary AIA status. Later on, musical guest Michael Sinatra singing from the songbook many Modernists know and love. 

The American Institute of Architects or AIA, is the leading professional association in the US, and USModernist Radio was there for their national conference last June in Chicago.  Joining us from that conference are Jen Masengarb, architectural historian and Executive Director of AIA Chicago; Marty Hylton, legendary historic preservationist and the Historic Architect for Climate Change at the National Park Service Climate, Science, and Disaster Response Program; and later on, the President of another AIA, the Australian Institute of Architects, Shannon Battisson.

The American Institute of Architects or AIA, is the leading professional association in the US, and USModernist Radio was there for their national conference last June in Chicago.  Joining us is the most relaxed person at the conference, just-retired CEO of the AIA, Robert Ivy. And later, music with American jazz legend Diane Schuur, aka Deedles.

Wildwood used to be the Palm Springs of the Jersey Shore. No, not where Snooki and The Situation spent their misspent youth, that’s Seaside Heights, way to the north.  Wildwood is three towns along a six-mile barrier island near the southern tip of New Jersey: Wildwood Crest, Wildwood, and Wildwood North, famous for a colorful array of over 300 wildly themed mid-century motels providing families wonderful vacation memories for decades.  Staying in Wildwood was the first exposure to Modernism for millions of Americans. Over drinks at the Philadelphia Marriott, where they spoke at the DOCOMOMO Conference, you’ll hear George talk with Daniel Vieyra, Professor Emeritus in the Kent State University School of Architecture; Stephanie Hoagland, Principal and Architectural Conservator of Jablonski Building Conservation; and Ian Smith, Principal of IS-DG Architects. 

You can have the best architect design your new Modernist house, but if your builder doesn’t know how to handle Modernist construction, materials, and details, you are in deep bleep.  Joining us are two masters of the Modernist domain:  Jake Goldberg, founder and president of Goldberg General Contracting in Chicago; and Kevin Murphy, founder and president of Newphire Building in Chapel Hill NC. Later on, jazz with James Torme, son of Mel.

Sometimes even the best design needs a little help, particularly when Mother Nature is having a bad day. Her earthquakes, for example, do not care whether your building is Modernist.  Her monsoons are not impressed with how famous the architect was, even if he was Paul R. Williams.  One of California’s most well-known architects, Williams’ buildings get more famous year by year.  There are two in Los Angeles at UCLA that have been recently restored and shored up for such ominous natural events, and joining us is the architect for those University projects, Scott Kelsey of CO Architects.  After that, jazz with musical guest John Armato, the drummer who loves ballads.

Ever since Modernism started, most banks have been, let's say this delicately, a huge PITA. Getting reasonable appraisals for mortgages, insurance claims, property taxes, and determining sales price is difficult, especially post-2008 when all the appraisal rules tightened up.  That’s where you need an expert, someone who knows Modernist architecture and can assign fair value.  Today’s guest is one of the foremost Modernist appraisers in California, James Ebert.  Later on, musical guest, the classy Elijah Rock.

Schindler is a name most everyone knows, for different reasons – and for different Schindlers.  There’s Schindler the elevator and escalator company, founded in 1874.  There’s German industrialist Oscar Schindler, hero of the 1993 movie Schindler's List, who saved more than a thousand refugees from the Nazis.  Then there’s Austrian Rudolf Schindler, the architect, who initially worked for Frank Lloyd Wright.  In 1920 Wright sent Schindler west to Los Angeles. Schindler started moonlighting in 1922, which Wright hated, and eventually Schindler quit to became a huge success on his own.  He and wife Pauline hosted many events at their Kings Road house, a model of architectural brilliance that's now 100 years old.   LA photographer Mona Kuhn got her first camera at 12 and she studied at Ohio State and the San Francisco Art Institute. Exhibited internationally, she has published several books of photography, her most recent entitled Kings Road, featuring Rudolf Schindler's Kings Road House. Later, we found out tha

Join USModernist and USModernist Radio at the Sheats-Goldstein house for a cocktail party November 12, and the next day at the the Stahl House for a Champagne tour. It's a rare chance to see inside these iconic Modernist houses! Details at www.usmodernist.org/la.