#363/Architecture Documentaries: Jake Gorst + Kirk Brown + Musical Guest Laura Pursell

Talking architecture can be a little dense, wordy, and imponderable, especially for people who aren’t architects but just love talking about, visiting, and being inspired by cool buildings.  Today we talk with two noted populists who make architecture understandable, architect and professor Christopher Wilson, and journalist and architourist Ken MacIntyre of modtraveler.com.  Later on, musical guest Emilie-Claire Barlow. 

Landscape architects are the ninjas of the design world, silently orchestrating beauty around buildings while you’re too busy staring at your phone. They decide whether that park bench is in the sun or shade, the exact curve of a sidewalk, and how to make an average building look extraordinary.  They’re the ones who make sure your city doesn’t feel like a concrete jungle and that your suburban sprawl doesn’t completely lose touch with nature. Today we’ll talk with two exceptional landscape architects, Chris LaGuardia and Michael Van Valkenburgh. Later, music with Pink Martini’s Timothy Nishimoto. 

In nearly every major city, housing the homeless is a major problem.  Since the defunding of residential mental health programs in Reagan era, the dramatic cost of housing, and other cutbacks in the welfare safety net, America created a huge population of people with problems who have nowhere to live except outside.  Especially in California, which has the most homeless citizens in America, everyone recognizes the problem but there’s complete lack of political will or consensus to significantly address it.  Even with the better ideas, there’s a generally well-funded, lawyered-up constituency that’s going to fight it.  Joining us today are the authors of the new book Housing the Nation, architect Alexander Gorlin and architectural historian Victoria Newhouse, with their take on what to do.

Where does the real work get done in Modernist preservation? State and local preservation groups show up at long, boring, and ridiculously bureaucratic public meetings, week after week, sometimes for years.  They get historic preservation tax credits passed in most states, and they monitor everything from development to the preservation easements we talk about frequently.  Joining us in the studio are two of these heroes, Preservation Durham’s Julianne Patterson and Preservation North Carolina’s Benjamin Briggs. From Chicago, we’ll talk with Ben Thomas, Executive Director of the Society of Architectural historians; later, music with Helena Redman.

Today you’ll hear from Miami architect and author Chad Oppenheim; from Long Beach architect Alan Pullman; from New Canaan author David Peterson, and later we swoon again with returning musical guest Halie Loren singing from her new album. 

Interviewing the children of mid-century architects has been one the best parts of producing USModernist Radio. We’ve had the pleasure of talking to Hicks Stone, son of Edward Durell Stone; John Barnes, son of Edward Larrabee Barnes, Ainsley Gores Gilligan, daughter of Landis; Fred Noyes, son of Eliot; Eric and Susan Saarinen, children of Eero; Raymond and Dion Neutra, children of Richard;  Francesca Breuer, daughter of Marcel; Mira Nakashima, daughter of George; Miles Jaffe, son of Norman; grandchildren of Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles and Ray Eames; and many more.  While most architect’s children do not become architects, Modernism is always in their DNA. Joining us today are Elaine Dart Hanan, daughter of Chicago architect Edward Dart; filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn, son of architect Louis Kahn; and special musical guest Lori Lieberman.

Being a Black architect in the white-male-dominated 20th century was tough.  You were paid less, worked harder, and rarely got any credit.  That is, if you could get hired at all. For example, by 1950 there were only two Black architects registered in North Carolina, both male. By 1980 the number was only 65 out of 1909. Even by 1993, Black architects made up only 7.5% nationally.  Today we’ll hear from Charles McAfee, considered by many to be the greatest living African-American architect. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, supported by the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles, is working to share and elevate the achievements of African-American architects, both men and women.  We’ll talk with the director that program, Brent Leggs.  Later on, great jazz with Jaimee Paul.

The 2024 Architecture and Design Film Festival, or ADFF, starts up next week in New York.  This long-running series is led by returning podcast guest Kyle Bergman, who founded the ADFF in New York in 2008 and hosts versions all over the world.  ADFF seeks out films with impassioned, human stories that appeal to both architects and the general design-loving public.  Today we’ll talk with filmmakers who’ve shown at ADFF including Sabine Gisger, Beatrice Minger, Katerina Kliwadenko and Mario Novas. Plus, we’ll talk with Kyle about the highlights for 2024.  Then, it's a great conversation with actor and singer Lucie Arnaz about architecture and jazz - and Spock's half-brother.

For every 3 or 4 Modernist buildings out there, there is likely one amazing unbuilt building with plans sitting in a drawer or a hard drive somewhere.  Exploring the wonderful world of the imagined but not realized, joining us are the authors of Never Built Los Angeles, Never Built New York, and the new book, the Atlas of Never Built Architecture, Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin. Later, music with Chicago’s Paul Giallorenzo.

Today we’re talking about Modernist havens San Diego and La Jolla with midcentury author and historian Keith York; plus Joan Gand and Lauren Lockhart of the La Jolla Historical Society on their upcoming Modernist tour, of which USModernist is a sponsor.  Later on, jazz with Lisa Veronica Wood and the Sidecar Social Club.