USModernist Radio - Architecture You Love

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#122/Eliot Noyes, One of the Harvard Five: Fred Noyes Dec 02, 2019

Show notes

Born in Boston, architect Eliot Noyes graduated Harvard University. After working for Boston's Coolidge Shepley Bulfinch & Abbott, he left to work for Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. Awarded a Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship, he toured the US visiting Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater and Taliesin; Eliel Saarinen's Cranbrook Academy of Art; and Richard Neutra houses. After returning briefly to Gropius and Breuer, he became the first director of the Industrial Design Department at the Museum of Modern Art in 1940, launching the careers of Charles and Ray Eames. Noyes redefined how design was perceived inside major corporations such as IBM and Mobil. He is recognized for designing World's Fair pavilions in Brussels, Belgium, San Antonio, Montreal, and New York. He was one of the noted Harvard Five architects, which included Marcel Breuer, Philip Johnson, John Johansen, and Landis Gores.

Our guest Fred Noyes is the son of Eliot Noyes. Fred Noyes worked for Graham Gund and Cambridge Seven and for over thirty years has run his own firm designing everything from hospitals to Bill and Hillary Clinton's summer White House on Martha's Vineyard. He was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Education from the Boston Architectural College in 2007 and lectures on architecture, biology, visual studies, and biochemistry. He owns the Noyes House II where he grew up, a house that he put under a preservation easement -- which protects it forever.

#121/The Incredible TWA Hotel at JFK: with Eric Saarinen + Architects Richard Southwick, Anne Marie Lubrano + Lea Ciaverra Nov 25, 2019

Show notes

There's a building at JFK airport in New York that people have been talking about for almost 60 years. At one time, it was the world's most modern airport terminal, bringing the Jet Age fully into public consciousness. This building had no peer; and its creator, Eero Saarinen, was one of the most visionary architects in the world. For years the airline TWA (later absorbed by American Airlines) used it as a glamorous gateway to the world, sending off passengers in an era people dressed up to fly and there was no such thing as airport security. The volume of passengers increased so much that the building had to be abandoned. After a few decades in mothballs, and dangerously close to demolition, Saarinen's TWA terminal has been meticulously restored and expanded, with a world-class hotel adjacent and even better, a massive underground conference facility you'd never know was there.

Host George Smart was in New York for a huge gala opening inside that underground conference center. He talked with Richard Southwick, project partner in charge with restoration architects Beyer Blinder Belle. But first, George sat down in Los Angeles at the iconic Beverly Hilton with Saarinen's son, Eric Saarinen. Then George is back in New York with architects Anne Marie Lubrano and Lea Ciaverra, of the not-surprisingly named firm Lubrano Ciaverra, for the brilliant new TWA hotel, you know, he one with the massive underground conference facility.

#120/DWELL: Editor William Hanley Nov 18, 2019

Show notes

Any fan of Modernism has DWELL Magazine somewhere in their house. It's a venerable but relatively recent publication, started in 2000 by Lara Hedberg Deam in San Francisco. She's still the owner, and like a winning NFL coach, she's been stocking the team over nearly 20 years with winning players like Karrie Jacobs, Michela O'Connor Abrams, Amanda Dameron, and former podcast guest Alison Arieff.

With a motto of "at home in the Modern World," DWELL helped re-energize a terrazzo (that's our new collective noun) of Modern movements: small houses, modern houses, green houses, sustainable house, micro houses, and prefab houses. Today we go remote with host George Smart in New York, where he sits down with Bill Hanley, Editor and Chief of DWELL since February 2019.

Hanley is a New York City-based writer, editor, and media producer, focusing on design, art, and urbanism. He was previously the digital director at Surface magazine, senior digital editor at Architectural Record, news editor at ARTnews, staff writer at Rhizome, and editor at ArtInfo.

#119/Living in Philip Johnson with Cristina Ross and Inger Stringfellow Nov 11, 2019

Show notes

In the lovely town of New Canaan CT, from the 1940s through the 1990s, no one was more influential than architect Philip Johnson. His internationally-famous Glass House celebrated its 70th anniversary recently with a huge outdoor party and aerial performance by Philippe Petit, known for his daring and highly unauthorized wirewalk between the World Trade Center towers pre-2001. New Canaan is full of mid-century Modernist architecture from Johnson, Eliot Noyes, Marcel Breuer, John Hedjuk, and John Johansen, collectively known as the Harvard Five, plus other architects such as Edward Durell Stone, Frank Lloyd Wright, and James Evans. Host George Smart sat down inside the Johnson-designed 1953 Wiley House with Inger Stringfellow and Cristina Ross.

#118/The (Next to) Last Frank Lloyd Wright Client: Roland Reisley Nov 04, 2019

Show notes

Frank Lloyd Wright, now 60 years after his death, remains the most well-known architect in America, perhaps the world. Notorious for his ego, which was matched only by his genius and talent, Wright would be delighted to be so this famous for so long. Wright would say, and he did, that he was the greatest architect ever, and for many, he was and still is.

Roland Reisley was only 26 when he became Wright's client for a small house. Now Reisley is one of Wright's last living clients, still in the same lovely house in upstate New York, a small colony of Wright houses known as Usonia. The Usonian houses were the prototype for small affordable houses across America in a post-war time when affordable housing was needed. Unfortunately, the Usonians were not particularly economical nor small, but they remain beautiful designs that people rarely want to leave. Our George Smart was on the road in New York and sat down with Reisley this past summer.

#117/Serial Modernist: Lord Peter Palumbo Oct 21, 2019

Show notes

Lord Peter Palumbo is a developer, art collector, car collector, wine collector, architecture collector and Conservative life peer based in the UK. He was educated at Eton and Worcester College, Oxford, a star athlete who played polo with Prince Charles. He first met Mies van her Rohe in the 1960's and spent much of the next 30 years trying to get one of his buildings built. In 1972, he purchased the Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe in Plano, Illinois and in 1986 he bought Frank Lloyd Wright's Kentuck Knob near Fallingwater in Pennsylvania.

#116/John Lautner A-Z: Tycho Saariste + Jan-Richard Kikkert Oct 07, 2019

Show notes

Architect John Lautner of Los Angeles was incredibly ahead of his time. Over 50 years, Lautner blurred the boundaries between indoor and outdoor spaces, between nature and architecture. He carried out 144 of his designs, 103 of which are still standing, mostly around Los Angeles, and all highly prized. Two architects in the Netherlands set out to personally discover not just a few of his projects - but ALL of them. Jan-Richard Kikkert and Tycho Saariste's new book, Lautner A-Z, has dedication and commitment and sheer perserverance to get inside almost every Lautner building.

#115/The Ferris Bueller House: Meghann Salamasick Sep 23, 2019

Show notes

One of the best 80s films is, the envelope please, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Here's the plot: near the end of the school year, high school senior Ferris Bueller (played by Matthew Broderick) fakes being sick to stay home. His parents believe him, though his sister Jeanie (played by Jennifer Grey, the baby you don't back into a corner) is not convinced. Ferris persuades his best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck) to help lure Ferris' girlfriend (Mia Sara) out of school and let them use his father's prized 1961 Ferrari. Spoiler: that Ferrari tumbles out of a really cool Modernist house, much to the chagrin of Cameron and his dad. Our pal Bob Langford, who pretty much knows every line in the movie, drops by to help us examine this cultural icon with guest Meghann Salamasick, who with her husband Chris are the owners of the that now-famous Modernist house. Later in the show, with apologies to Wayne Newton, it's George and Bob and Tom serenading Meghann.

#114/Architecture Photographer Ezra Stoller: Pierluigi Serraino + Erica Stoller Sep 09, 2019

Show notes

Returning podcast guest Pierluigi Serraino is an architect and author whose book Modernism Rediscovered contributed to the huge re-emergence of interest in the architecture we all know and love. He has written books on Eero Saarinen, NorCalMod: Icons of Northern California Modernism, California Captured with past podcast guests Emily Bills and Sam Lubell, and his newest book co-authored with Erica Stoller, Ezra Stoller: A Photographic History of Modern American Architecture.

Erica Stoller is the director of Esto, an agency representing architectural photographers and managing a massive archive of related images related to the architecture photography of her father, Ezra Stoller. One of very best photographers of mid-Century Modernism, his work lives on in the esto archive used by scholars, photo researchers, and publishers worldwide. In addition to running ESTO, Erica is a photographer and an artist, making wall sculpture of repurposed industrial materials like plastic plumbing tubes, foam insulation, parachute cord, cable ties, bead chain, wire rope and metal connectors.

#113/Modernism is Bad, Really Bad: Professor James Stevens Curl Aug 26, 2019

Show notes

A graduate in Architecture from Oxford, Professor James Stevens Curl is known for scholarship, penetrating criticisms, lucidity of style, and holding his nose at the stench of Modernism, of which he is definitely not a fan. He's probably rather be down at the Groaning Board hoisting a pint, but we're thrilled to have him talk about his new award-winning book, Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism, in which he takes apart the Modernist movement piece by piece! However, he makes a good argument for how the wider modern movement in the 1950's (highways, cars, planes, not just architecture) has harmed the planet and the community way of life.

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