Home Page Radio

12 NOON, Wednesday, September 17, 2025 WPKN 89.5 FM wpkn.orgAfter nine years (!) HOME PAGE RADIO at WPKN changes: this unique focus on the role of homes in our in our lives with live sharing of insights, becomes a forum for exploring design in our culture – not just its role in our lives now, but focusing on the radical changes that are happening. DESIGN NOW! will debut on Saturday, October 4, 7AM!What will Artificial Intelligence mean to those dedicating their lives to innovative creation?How will the internet change how we judge design beyond the instant superficial reactions of our meme-based/swipe left-right judgment?Our perception of design is now instant and universal: and that immediate meaning is becoming directly associated with our politics: to what end?How does technology redefine art?What buildings are dead structures standing: awaiting abandonment?Guests from HOME PAGE’s 9 years join us to comment on the home’s legacy – and what DESIGN NOW! can address.

12 NOON, Wednesday, August 20, 2025 WPKN 89.5 FM wpkn.orgHomes are universal – we all need a safe place to rest our head and be away from the world. But just as people are diverse, homes are too. And some of those people capture our imagination. For architects and designers homes are often seen as the Essential Building: manifesting the most elemental, fundamental aspects of structure and building.But our culture often focuses on those we find fascinating: with Starchitects those persona find embodiment in their homes, but more, the artist, the rich, the idiosyncratic all all homes and the cultural focus on them as celebrities is transferred directly to their homes. Since Fallingwater 50 years ago “Tourist Destination” architecture has included homes. In Connecticut we have Philip Johnson’s Glass House and Mark Twain’s own home in Hartford.Why do these homes embody our hopes beyond their structures and have cultural and personal importance to so many? Why do we want to go to see these homes? Why are they worth so much attention – what does that focus reveal about what our homes mean to us?Great guests associated with these terrific places join us!

12 NOON, Wednesday, July 16, 2025 WPKN 89.5 FM wpkn.orgIt is extremely expensive to have a place to live near New York City – even in southern New England and Long Island.In the first half of the 20th century, the single family home basis of freestanding homes simply sprouted out of fallow farm lands – each on their own plot of land. After World War 2 whole neighborhoods suburbia took that fallow farmland and made instant “Bedroom Communities” before there was any land regulation now known as “Zoning”. That explosive change was facilitated by commuter trains, refrigerated food transportation and the Federal Highway System – but that change also facilitated the birth of Zoning Laws.In most suburban communities Zoning Codes were designed to protect the value of the homes that were already built by insuring that the pattern of single family homes on individual building lots was mandated and the size and nature of new development served to perpetuate the suburban patterning that these communities were based on.But this low density, car-dependent culture isolated commercial and civil facilities into designated town centers and made home ownership financially impossible for lower income families. As costs exploded in the last generations and the environmental effects of low-density living became known, there is a desire to change the reasoning behind Zoning from protecting and projecting existing communities – despite the extreme (and growing) problems of affordability for more and more people in America.Connecticut and other governments have tried to facilitate, even require, the ability of our communities to adapt to this affordability crisis by revising the Zoning laws created to perpetuate the status quo: In Connecticut this means state bills that direct the more that 150 towns and cities that have in-place laws and processes that regulate land use. The latest version of that revamping of state Zoning requirements was passed by the Legislature, and vetoed by Governor Lamont after many of those towns and cities plead their case for maintaining the existing systems their communities use now.When zoning changes (and it will) how will houses change? How will communities change? Will there be new ways of living together be facilitated by land use regulations? Second homes on existing single family home sites (Accessory Dwelling Units), income regulated multifamily housing new construction, co-housing, unrelated people living together as a family are all being executed now: but what are the ways a new generation of houses will create the housing we need to change the prohibitive costs?

12 NOON, Wednesday, June 18, 2025 WPKN 89.5 FM wpkn.orgIts getting warm. Soon HOT.As the world warms, now (and more in the future) we can either add to that heat by creating more carbon to generate electricity to create the air conditioning we need to be comfortable in our homes, or we can use less AC. Changing buildings can be technological, but it can also just be turning off the technology.But comfort and safety from the elements is why we have buildings. And buildings are why we have designers. HOME Page has some of the best architects from some of the hottest places in America to offer up how any place can use its design to use air conditioning less. Beyond eliminating the carbon creation of AC, electrical costs are soaring as we transition to more electrical generation that uses less carbon – so using the “Off” switch daves more and more money, too.We have lived in a home without air conditioning for over 40 years: shade, wind, orientation can be used to design a home that uses less technology, not use more technology to use less carbon. Great voices of reason in a sea of hype and marketing!

12 NOON, Wednesday May 21, 2025 WPKN 89.5 FM wpkn.orgWe are used to thinking that homes are just buildings: but are they different in the way we design them?Gaston Bachelard, in the 1958 book The Poetics of Space, wrote, “If I were asked to name the chief benefits of the house. I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.” Before he built his idyl, Walden, Henry David Thoreau wrote about his friend’s home, “I that found all his peculiarities faithfully expressed, his humanity, his fear of death, love or retirement, simplicity, etc.,” then proceeded to erect his own.Nothing has changed since Thoreau, Bachelard, and Pollan. But every human wants the place they hope for and feel they need. Because our homes are a mirror of who we are. So we try to make ourselves in our homes. When designers are part of that creation, the intimacies of those we design with could be seen as part of “just doing business.” Those unchanging shared intimacies of hope and fear and faith of home creation go beyond the transactions of most other things in our lives. Unlike the episodic encounter with a chef or a fashion designer, the continuity of an architect’s incorporation into the lives of our clients is more akin to a psychotherapist, one who knows both the origin story and the life evolution of those who bond with each other to make a home. But like a priest or rabbi, the designer sees more than the individual. The spiritual expression of faith in the future a home embodies is a gift given to us.Either by design or circumstance, we make our houses. When architects help birth them, the places we make often outlive us and the histories of what we make. In the rough-and-tumble world of construction that beauty can be forgotten, but it’s why we and our clients are alive.Architects who have designed many types of buildings but have focused on homes join us! Please join me and Architects Robert Orr of New Haven and John DeForest of Seattle!

LIVE! NOON! WEDNESDAY APRIL 16: WPKN 89.5fm Streaming wpkn.orgIn a strange housing market, the zeitgeist of the moment is depression. High interest rates, low supply, insane prices make anywhere around a city bizarrely inaccessible. This means building is harder, too. But some persist: Why?Why would you have the courage to risk so much time and money in such a market? Well, the home is at the core of our lives, for anyone – for some it is a place of safety from the street, for others its their most expensive household expense, for others where they live is their core it is their biggest investment, for others, their homes are their biggest liability.For for a bunch of us where we live is part of who we are: our values, our hopes, what we find beautiful. For those of us who cannot escape the reality of our devotion to creating our place in the world, the only option is building it. Three intrepid home creators, two through COVID, share their stories on HOME PAGE RADIO: JOIN US!

LIVE! NOON! Wednesday, March 19 WPKN 89.5fm STREAMING wpkn.orgWe all live somewhere. Our homes are as fundamental as our clothing, our food, just living. In the cultural shake-out of the 21st century, organized religion in America has taken a hit in membership, attendance, and relevance – but that change has been accompanied by the statistical revelation that over 80% of us are “spiritual” – with more and more of us saying that they are “spiritual but not religious.”If homes are just reflections of us, and we, as humans, are “spiritual” do our homes reflect that aspect of who we are? Are our homes “spiritual” to us? Did the sequestration of the pandemic simultaneously remove us from our places of worship, but connect us to our homes in a spiritual perspective that was missing? How do our homes reflect that spiritual connection?In our homes, we hang mezuzah’s, crucifixes, even portraits of Jesus, we light candles – but beyond icons and rituals, how do our homes reflect the spiritual reality of the human condition? Some great guests reflect on this question.Everyone has a home, but some think about spiritual lives in a secular world. Joining Home Page are those who think about how we live domestically and faithfully. David Zahl, is a husband, father and homeowner and co-created Mockingbird Ministries. Yodan Rofe is a professor, author and is dedicated to exploring “Living Architecture” with the philosophy of Christopher Alexander. Steve Mouzon is an architect, writer, and new urbanist who has long focused on cultural traditions in design, particularly those in the south

Wednesday, February 19, 2025 12 Noon WPKN 89.5 FM wpkn.orgCensorship comes in many forms. We censor ourselves at family gatherings on politics. We cannot say prohibited words on WPKN radio shows. We even try to limit what can be taught, read at a library, or spoken about in public forums.For the second time in four years, the Federal Government will try to censor what it builds. The first time the end of the Trump Administration the desire to limit new federal construction to “classical” and “traditional” aesthetics. That declaration was rescinded immediately upon the Biden Administration took office. The second Trump Administration re-wrote in matching language for this declaration – announced one day after the President’s isecond nauguration:“Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government…”This is code language for “No Contemporary, Modernist or Non-Traditional Building shall be built for federally financed building projects.”The “Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture” will be revised so that the General Services Administration will recommend rejection of any architectural design to the President of the United States that is not “regional. traditional and classical”. Who decides what is “regional, traditional and classical”? Friends of the President.Why does a new President do aesthetic censorship? Why is there an immediate sense that Political Correctness now extends to Aesthetic Correctness?Three great thought leaders in architecture will talk about Censorship In Architecture In 2025 – architects Michael Imber of Austin, Robert Orr and Peter Newman of Connecticut.

Wednesday, January 15, 2025 12 Noon WPKN 89.5 FM wpkn.orgWe are in a time of change: climate, society, politics, technology: and buildings always adapt: but in the instant exposure of the Internet, is there anything “new” in how we conceive of buildings and architecture?  Rather than performance (resilience, sustainability, energy efficiency) is there a different way building design approaches how humans as individuals and as cultures use now than in the 20th century? Will the next homes just be “better”or will we rethink how we use themSuburbia was not a personal or social reality before the full flower of The Industrial Revolution: will there be a new way we house ourselves?Technology has always changed buildings, but buildings respond with what we know, not by rethinking design. Air Conditioning to reduce heat fully changed how buildings by sealing them and thus how humans interact with the climate. Cars ended how distance shaped communities, so distances between us spread and buildings increased in size to house them. Wars and work and worship are leaving the baseline requirement of human gathering: Will the future create a baseline of isolation in how we inhabit our buildings and communities?In times of discovery (the Renaissance and creation of America) humanity – cultures have completely embraced ancient, familiar aesthetics – Classical Rationalization of new ideas of culture. If the technological explosion is as changing, will we be looking to the pastas a way to feel safe in architecture when society is in radical change?   How will our homes be affected?Four great guests will help us:  Martin Pedersen is a New York based writer, critic and editor and is the executive director of the Common Edge Collaborative, Todd Gould has been a broker/ owner/ realtor for 27 years, Leigh Whiteman Is The Whiteman Team at William Raveis Real Estate, and Clay Chapman is a design/build mason who founded “Hope for Architecture,” a structural masonry revival.

Wednesday, December 18, 2024 12 Noon WPKN 89.5 FM wpkn.orgThe year is about to end. We are past COVID and the election. We are way beyond the awe of seeing our first Smart Phone, let alone the thrill of posting meaningless internet fodder. The advent of the 21st Century is old news.It is not yet the new year, new presidency, or anywhere near knowing how our culture will connect post lingering analog vestiges. We are more in between than most moments. But our humanity has not changed. We eat, sleep, love – and we all live somewhere.Our homes, where we live, are as constant as the rest our our culture is in transition. We may be urbanizing, we may be rejecting McMansions, we may be re-defining “family”, but we will always need a place to eat, sleep, wash and feel safe; The Home.So it’s a good time to think about Our Homes: and Home Page gathers voices from diverse voices who help create those homes. Steve Mouzon from Alabama, architect and co-founder of the Congress of New Urbanism architects and from Seattle Susan Ingham, of Building Beauty and John DeForest of DeForest Architects and architect Ross Chapin FAIA who wrote “Pocket Neighborhoods” also from Washington state all share the unique and unversal reality of the home in everyone’s life. Join us!