USModernist Radio USModernist Radio

USModernist® Radio is underwritten by June Goldfinger and Jeff Taylor, sponsors of Circle Square Triangle:  a traveling exhibition on the Architecture of Myron Goldfinger - and by Diane Bald and The Budman Family, restoring significant architecture in Toronto, Los Angeles, Malibu and Palm Springs. Diane Bald and The Budman Family, restoring significant architecture in Toronto, Los Angeles, Malibu and Palm Springs.

Here are all our past shows

Listen to one of America's top-rated architecture podcasts as the USModernist® Radio crew talks and laughs with fascinating people who own, create, love, and hate Modernist architecture, the most controversial houses and buildings in the world.

Past and upcoming architecture guests include Jeanne Gang, Bjarke Ingels, Daniel Libeskind, Barbara Bestor, Moshe Safdie, Tom Kundig, Harry Bates, Peter Bohlin, Alan Hess, Peter Gluck, Robert Rubin, Blair Kamin, Barry Bergdoll, Myron Goldfinger, Kenneth Frampton, Katie Swenson, Bob Ivy, Jen Masengarb, Angie Brooks + Larry Scarpa, Gisue Hariri, Sekou Cooke, Alexandra Lange, Paul Goldberger, Inga Saffron, Jim Olson, Debbie Millman, Sarah Susanka, Helena Arahuete, Raymond and Dion Neutra, Eric and Susan Saarinen, and many more.

Past and upcoming musical guests include China Forbes, Ann Hampton Callaway, Lucy Wijnands, Diane Schuur, Noel Paul Stookey, Brenda Lee, Lenore Raphael and Howard Alden, Eliane Elias, Toni Tennille, Halie Loren, Stacey Kent, Jane Monheit, Jennifer Warnes, Marilyn Scott, Cheryl Bentyne, Janis Siegel, Storm Large, Kate Earl, Nneena Freelon, Darius Brubeck, Maria Maldaur, Claire Martin, Robin McKelle, Bria Skonberg, Sophie Milman, Lucy Woodward, Heather Rigdon, Tierney Sutton and many others, including: Diana Panton / Don Most / Donna Loren / Eden Atwood / Elaine Lucia / Elijah Rock / Erin Boheme / Gina Eckstine / Hailey Tuck / Heidi Skjerve & Daniel Formo / Helen Gillet / Judy Carmichael / Kate Earl / Laura Fygi / Linda Eder / Louise Cappi / Melissa Morgan / Michael Sinatra / Monika Ryan / Nicole Zuraitis / Oleta Adams / Pat Kirtley / Paul Marinaro / Peter Lamb and the Wolves / Rebecca Kilgore / Rosana Eckert / Tony Desare / Victoria Vox

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Host and Executive Producer George Smart HAIA, one dark and stormy night in 2007, started what has become USModernist®, the largest open digital nonprofit educational archive for Modernist residential design in the world. George and his intrepid team of wildly dedicated volunteers and woefully underpaid staff have won 19 local, state, and national awards, He appears in the 2020 architecture documentary Frey II and the 2024 architecture documentary New England Modernism, both by Jake Gorst.

Announcer, co-host, and engineer Tom Guild, legendary Raleigh FM DJ, grew up in a Durham Modernist house. He was on WRDU and WQDR back when humans actually played vinyl records over the airwaves using something called radio. Over the years, Tom recorded and mixed hours of top-notch audio including Porsche By Design for the NC Museum of Art. He met Mick Jagger. He has not met Frank Gehry. The security code for the show's recording studio, SoundTrax, is 8675309.

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Upcoming Episodes


Jun 3 #355/Capturing the Modernist Vibe:  Danny Heller + Josh Agle

Let’s talk art, maybe one of the paintings you could buy from today’s guests. The height of Modernist architecture was around 1962 but those butterfly roofs, dressing up for martini parties, sculpted tailfins, and even tiki décor have never been more popular.  Artists Danny Heller and Josh Agle, aka Shag, each brilliantly capture that midcentury vibe that keeps us all inspired. Later on, returning musical guest Stacey Kent with a new album.


May 27 #354/Where No Furniture Has Gone Before, Part II: The Neutral Zone's Ray Tesi + Vic Mignogna + Musical Guest Amanda Carr

.  In 1966 the first episode of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek launched a franchise still going strong nearly 60 years later.  Star Trek presented a progressive, optimistic future where Earth transcended national and international politics.  We had our act together as a planet. Something most people don’t know is that the original Star Trek adapted midcentury Modern furniture for set design. In a followup to Where No Furniture Has Gone Before, where we interviewed Dan Chavkin and Brian McGuire on their book Star Trek - Designing the Final Frontier - The Untold Story of How Midcentury Modern Decor Shaped Our View of the Future, George travelled to Kingland GA to see, and sit on, that special Star Trek furniture.  You’ll hear from Ray Tesi, owner of Neutral Zone Studios, and Vic Mignogna, executive producer of the web series Star Trek Continues, which completed that first five-year mission.  Later on, musical guest Amanda Carr.


 May 20 #353/Lissa Ballinger on Aspen + Isaac Jeffreys on the Catskills + Musical Guest David Weiss + The Cookers

Ah, Aspen.  The land of clean air, brisk skiing, pensive thinktanks, and enormous wealth.  Nestled in the gorgeous mountains of Colorado, you might not know that Aspen was influenced by Modernism and has special connections to the Bauhaus in Germany.  Today you’ll hear from Lissa Ballinger, acting director of the Aspen Institute, about the Bauhaus-Aspen connection, and then it’s photographer Isaac Jeffreys one Modernist resorts of the Catskills in New York, famous for more than just comedians and Mrs. Maisel. Later, music with jazz trumpeter David Weiss of the Cookers.


May 13 #352/Architects Peter Eisenman + Esther Sperber + Richard Olcott

New York City punches way above its weight in architecture and architects, and today we’ll talk with three from that city, Peter Eisenman, Esther Sperber, and Richard Olcott



May 6 #351/David Coffey on Bakersfield + Luke Leuschner on Palm Desert + Peter McMahon on Cape Cod

 

Palm Springs and Los Angeles have thousands of Modernist houses, but there are many towns with their own midcentury architectural heritage. From Modernism Week 2024, we talk with David Coffey about Bakersfield CA; Palm Desert CA native and architectural researcher Luke Leuschner, then Peter McMahon with Cape Cod Modern House Trust, for an update on saving Marcel Breuer’s Cape Cod house.


Apr 29 #350/Alastair Gordon + Barbara Gordon

Today, two exceptional Gordons - not related.  Alastair Gordon is an award-winning author, critic, and curator, focusing on art, architecture, and in his spare time, he made a film about Long Island modernist architect Norman Jaffe, Beyond the Beach. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Architectural Digest, Vanity Fair, Architectural Record, and the Miami Herald, among many other publications. In 2000, his landmark book Weekend Utopia launched a boom in interest in Modernism on Long Island, and 25 more books later, if you want to know something about Modernism on Long Island, he’s the one to call.   Barbara Gordon has been working to save Chicago’s architectural landmarks for nearly 30 years. With a degree from Loyola and a masters from National Louis University, she was the VP of program operations at the wildly successful Chicago Architecture Foundation.  She’s now the Executive Director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. 


Apr 22 #349/Aluminaire's Final Resting Place:  Frances Campani + Michael Schwarting + Architectural Photographer Robin Hill

Way back in 1987, New York Institute of Technology architects Michael Schwarting and Frances Campani saved the 1931 Aluminaire House from destruction, and rebuilt it.  Then they had to take it apart.  Now nearly 40 years later, Aluminaire House reached it’s final resting place at the Palm Springs Art Museum, visible today on the museum grounds.  Recorded poolside at Modernism Week,  you will hear about this visionary house, designed by Albert Frey and Lawrence Kocher, and Aluminaire’s journey from a private Long Island estate to the New York Institite of Technology to Palm Springs.  Later on from the studio, we chat with architectural photographer Robin Hill. 


Apr 15 #348/Architecture Documentaries:  Louise Lemoine + Denise Zmekhol + Simon Mark Brown

Joining the show are three documentary filmmakers bravely capturing architects and architecture on film.  Making these movies is an incredible labor of love; it takes a tremendous amount of work and time, often years, you’re fundraising continually, production is expensive, even when done on the cheap, and the financial reward at the end of all that, well, let’s say you could do better working a couple of months under the golden arches.  That’s why these folks are our heroes and heroines.  We’ll talk to Louise Lemoine of Beka and Lemoine, Denise Zmekhol, and Simon Mark-Brown.