#463/Will Bruder + Alex Josephson + Greg Case + Off Grid with Suzy Cash

Introduction

0:00Hi, I'm Robert Ivey, co-author of the book Out There, and you are listening to U.S. Modernist Radio. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Oh, I don't care what mama don't allow, gonna draw my modern anyhow. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Welcome to U.S. Modernist Radio, where we talk and laugh with people who enjoy, own, create, dream about, preserve, love, and hate modernist architecture, the most exciting and controversial buildings in the world.

0:38I'm Tom Guild. Our guests today include Will Bruder, a celebrated architect who never went to architecture school. He just became one of the most respected architects in America by apprenticing to Paolo Solari and Gunnar Burkerts. Then we'll meet Alex Josephson. He quit London's most prestigious architecture program, mid-degree, and struck out on his own. Our next guest, Greg Case, isn't an architect at all. He's an ad guy, a madman, who out-researched the professionals and rescued a forgotten modernist from obscurity.

1:11And our last guest, Susie Cash, has a graduate degree and a resume from one of the best firms in the South, yet she traded it for an off-grid life built with her own hands. And now here's your host, for whom off-grid means his Belgian waffle came out wonky, Mr. Modernism, George Smart. Thanks, Tom. I'll be the first to admit it. I am very much on-grid. Hook me up to the utilities, please. Water, power, internet. Camping? Well, my version of camping is the Motel 6.

1:43My idea of a hike is the distance from the parking lot to the movie theater. But let's move on.

Threats to Modernist Preservation

1:50Modernism is under siege lately. From climate policy to copyright law, the forces threatening mid-century architecture in 2026 are more varied, more aggressive, and frankly, more absurd than ever. Here are some of the biggest threats to modernist preservation right now. Number five. Architects and the media clamor constantly for green, sustainable buildings, but we aren't seeing nearly enough restorations. The greenest building is one that's already built. That's the embodied carbon argument for preservation.

2:22Many mid-century homes are demolished because it's easier to start over with new materials. Despite claims by everyone outside of scientists, because, heck, what do they know, modernist preservation through reuse is a serious climate change cure, not just an aesthetic one. Number four. The Trump administration's executive orders continue to push classicism for federal architecture and encourage disdain for modernism, both new and existing. We're all following the demolition of the White House East Wing, the construction of the $200 million ballroom. I mean, $400 million ballroom.

2:58No. No. I mean, the $600 million bunker, paid for with private funds. Oh, no. No. Sorry. Your taxpayer dollars. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has sued to stop this madness, but their chances are slim with a judiciary that has lost its objectivity and a Congress that has forgotten about checks and balances. Number three. In wealthy resort areas like the Hamptons, La Jolla, Sarasota, and all along the California coast, small modernist houses are practically wearing a tear-me-down sign, especially when 12,000-square-foot houses are the new normal.

3:36People think, oh, that house is in the National Register. It's safe. Nope. That registry gives zero protection from demolition. The only legally enforceable protections are deed restrictions and preservation easements. Number two. The administration's move to drop architecture from its list of professional degrees has put the AIA in direct conflict with the White House, and modernism is squarely in the crosshairs. Historically, the AIA usually does nothing but write sternly worded letters when protesting anything. We'll see if their lobbyists get that back on track.

4:12And number one. There's the archive problem. What happens to an architect's drawings, photos, and records when they die? Frank Gehry, Robert A.M. Stern, and Ricardo Scofidio all died in the last year, but they were famous, and people saved the stuff of famous people. What about the hundreds of architects who will die in 2026? They're unknown, who were as talented as the famous architects, but never did much outside of their own towns. Getting families to preserve and digitize the records of these journeymen and women is critical to preserving the houses they designed.

4:48If you know of a family struggling with this issue, please be in touch.

Will Bruder's Architectural Journey

5:18Will Bruder never went to architecture school. He taught himself, then apprenticed under Paolo Solieri and Gunnar Burkerts, and he had his license by the age of 27 in 1973. Over a 46-year career, he's completed more than 650 projects, earned a Rome Prize Fellowship, and taught at MIT, Yale, and beyond.

5:51His work is rooted in light, specifically how desert, sun, materials, and carefully placed openings can connect people to place. You can see all his houses at usmodernist.org slash Bruder. Here's George's conversation with Will Bruder. Will, let's start by talking about somebody that doesn't get a lot of conversation, someone you worked with way back, and that's Gunnar Burkerts. What was he like? Gunnar Burkerts was out of Saarinen's office, and he had his own career happening.

6:26He seemed to be very much doing a really wonderful nature of work, and it was everything I wanted to be. It was my first job out of college, and he took me on, and suddenly I was the project lead on the Houston Contemporary Arts Museum.

6:45It was just a delightful experience of respect for each other and a lot of freedom, and it was a nice place to start architecture formally on. That must have been a thrilling job for you. Yeah, yeah, that was quite good. Yeah, I'd started before that. I worked for an interesting office for four years because I have no formal training as an architect. And so I put my own curriculum together, and Wisconsin at that time had no school of architecture, and I was working for a really good firm and fell into that.

7:17So I made it a really good learning experience, and I went from that to finishing my apprenticeship and then getting the job with Burkerts, and that was good and was ready when time came. Now, how did you meet Paolo Solari and start your long association with him? Well, Paolo Solari, I was aware of the work, and it just seemed like something that was appropriate. And at the time, I was getting ready to sort of venture out on my own in life. So I got married in Franklin Wright's church in Madison, and we got in the car and drove and spent the first night visiting Bruce Goff, and then ended up with Paolo for six months.

7:55Wait a second, you spent your honeymoon visiting Bruce Goff? Yeah.

8:01That's not something many people can say. Yeah, right, right. And we got to Kansas City at the time. That's when he was there, and I picked up the phone and called him. But it just ended up with a long conversation. We got there about six o'clock in the evening, and we left at midnight. And he was just totally endearing and interesting and connected. And he was a very special person. All right, so back to Solari. How did you get to Solari?

8:32I was tracking the work because I've always had a proclivity for sort of tracking things. And I picked up that Solari was there. And all of a sudden, I was at this point in my life that started to change and break. And I went to work with Paolo for six months, eight months as an apprentice. And that was interesting because it was at the original studio in Cosanti, not Art Cosanti. So it was pre that. We staked out the site for the Art Cosanti project as part of it towards the later stay there. Paolo was just, it was really great.

9:02You know, you were in the original drafting room next to the little pink house. And you'd work inside, and then you'd work construction. And, you know, it was just very formative. And it was, like I say, right at the threshold of doing the Arcology book. And so I got to work on those drawings as well as the thoughts. And it was an excellent, excellent experience. That went really well and maintained contact with Paolo through the rest of his life. It was good.

9:31Arcology, The City and the Image of Man, was one of the seminal books of its era. Yes. What is Arcology exactly? Arcology is the idea of architecture and ecology sort of bonding. And that was when the sort of focus on the ecological movement was really there. And he put those words together, and it made a lot of sense for the time and where the energy of the world was going. And Paolo was a visionary, and he had a great hand, and he had these sketchbooks.

10:04And I would take a sketchbook down from his house. He kept the sketchbooks in his house, and he'd let me have them for the afternoon and evening. I'd take them down and look at them in the studio and then return them before I went to bed. And like I say, we were just finishing up the last projects at Cosanti. So I worked on the pool complex and some of the connective fabric and landscape texture. And then with my background, I had been casting bronze before I got there in my program at the university.

10:34So I ended up pouring bronze for that whole six months. So whenever I heard the kiln go off, I knew I had about 10 minutes to get over there and what the task would be. So Cosanti was his original complex headquarters in Phoenix. In Scottsdale, yeah. In Scottsdale. And how did that grow into our Cosanti, the bigger complex outside of town? Well, part of what he had was he had this vision of doing the city in the image of man, and he needed space and scale to do that.

11:06And so he went looking for land, and it was about 15 minutes off the interstate highway to turn off to Prescott, Arizona. And he bought this acreage, and it was a mesa and an overlook of a dry riverbed. Well, he was going to build a city there. We staked it out, and that was one of the cities in the arcology book that he had done. It was just an excellent experience. But he had a determination and a willfulness about him that was profound, the right place at the right time for me, and it was very good.

11:36Arcosanti's become such a pilgrimage place for architecture students, particularly to visit during their careers. What's drawing them there? I don't know exactly, except it's an idyllic place in this high desert setting, and just to follow the whole thread of what his vision was, and to be on that site, I think that's generally what, you know, because it was a good hands-on experience, and the ideas were really good. Apollo was just, he wrote better than he spoke, but it was just the right moment in time that it all came together.

Designing the Burton Bar Library

12:13I had the privilege of walking around with you in the Burton Bar Central Library in Phoenix, which is one of your astonishing accomplishments. Yes, thank you. It won the 25-year award, I think, right? Yes, it did. Still, when people go in there, they really can't quite believe it's a library. It's just so, it's overwhelming in a good way. Yeah, I mean, the whole sequence, I mean, the library became this sort of metaphorical abstraction of a mesa from the exterior with the weathered copper sort of curving saddlebag forms.

12:50And in those saddlebag forms, you have all the support for the, not only the exiting of the building, but the restrooms and mechanical systems and all that. So it was an interesting diagram that way. It was a precast concrete structure, and I've always had a fascination with natural light and how you incorporate light into architecture, into buildings. And so as you get to the top of the plateau, if you will, what's called the Crystal Canyon, the open atrium up through the five levels of the building, you've got the tracking skylights on the top.

13:21Your whole gesture is driven by the light. And then as you move up through the building, you're on either the stair, and the stair is set with a very comfortable 6 and 12 rise to run. So a lot of people walk there without any problem at all. It's considered as a formal stair. And then you have the three high-speed elevators that take you to the top of the mesa, if you will. And as you get to the top, you have the entire non-circulating collection of the non-fiction books and the great reading room on the top. And naively, I always have optimism when I reach. The first thing I did when I got the commission was I contacted Overup, and I knew their engineering skills would complement what my aspirations were, and that became a great relationship.

14:02And when I called them, they said, well, happy to tell you, we just opened our office in Southern California. And so it became their first major project, but they were the building systems engineers for the building. And that was a bit bold for a building that was going to cost $95 a square foot, $100 a square foot. But why not travel with the best, right? Oh, sure. Everybody should visit this library. And the reading room that you were talking about, I thought, was one of the most amazing spaces because you're up in the top.

14:32Right. And you're in this sort of interior vista overlooking the library. And yet it's a very relaxed feeling up there, like you would see yourself. When we were walking around, I could see myself reading there. And, of course, watching all the people reading. It was just masterful. Thank you. Thank you. And, again, it's that simple orientation against the main street of the city, which is Central Avenue. It's parallel to that. And that happens to be due south, north-south. And so on each edge of the great reading room at the top, you have the four-inch slots of glass between the concrete wall and the roof.

15:09And with the tensegrity system that was developed with Overeux for that, it sort of magically floats on the plate. Did that lead to other libraries, Will? Yeah. Well, my first sort of building, public building, when I opened my practice was a small 10,000-square-foot branch called Mesquite Library. I did four other libraries in Phoenix. And then the other building of note from a public standpoint is the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, Nevada. It was a very successful building. And then Billings Library, of course, Billings in Montana. There was a main library there.

15:39So I enjoy public work. You've had a number of architects come through your office that have gone on to do great things themselves in our area. Catherine Hogan. Who are some of the other people that have come through your office? Wendell Burnett. Mm-hmm. You might know that name. Rick Joy down in Tucson. Sure. Jack DeBartolo III. Uh-huh. We had a lot of good times together. And in the book, it's called The Architecture of Will Bruder.

16:11And one of the things I like about this book is that it's not just a picture book. It has words. But it doesn't have too many words. It seems to have exactly the right number of words. Thank you. You know, the story is told in the images and the drawings. And hopefully a spirit. And there's a flow in the book that shows the texture of going back and forth between the very private realm of the residents and then the very public realm of these public places. Each building is sort of gives you a sense that once you've gone through that or taken the time to go through it, you have a certain sense that you've been there.

16:47I mean, it's trying to give you context. It's trying to give you the flow through the building, give you the scale of various things from the back of house to the front of house. From that standpoint, I guess I'm a fairly pragmatic person and enjoy that sort of clarity. Now, I know how what it takes to put together a book. When did you start working on this? The book was about, what, a three-year process? And another important part of my life's influence is, do you know Paul Schweiker's work? Oh, yes. Okay. Well, Paul Schweiker, it was amazing because he retired to Arizona.

17:20And he did a beautiful house for himself on a mountaintop in Sedona, Arizona. And within two weeks of knowing that he was there, and I'd never met the man before in my life, I arrived up his driveway on this minor mountaintop. And it took my breath away. I mean, it was just breathtaking, simple gable roof. It had a black corrugated metal roof on the gable. And it was just a long rectangle. And it was wood. And it was beautifully structured and crafted. And I just followed sort of the spatial sequence of dropping the car down by the bottom of the hill and walking up the driveway and coming to it and seeing this breezeway.

17:58And it wasn't normally like me to be rude. And I try not to be rude. And I walked straight through this open passageway out to the gazebo at the back. And I'm sitting there with my mouth hanging open, just thoroughly enjoying it. It was like, oh, my gosh, right? And I was aware of his work, but it was what you'd expect and beyond. And all of a sudden, I'm standing there and then totally embarrassed because I hear this sort of custom sliding plexiglass door that he had done sliding open to my right coming out of the house, right? And here I am, and I'm virtually in his territory, right?

18:32And my great opening line to Paul was, are you Paul Schweiker? I thought you were dead.

18:39Nice way to start an introduction, but that became a journey of friendship to his passing. It was just really exceptional. So I had 10, 15 years with Paul Schweiker, and I've been to all the work. And I have a book that's ready to be published on Paul Schweiker as well. Oh, awesome. Yeah. So you've got two books. I'll have two books, yeah, shortly. Oh, cool. I noticed in this book, there's a little section about the time that you were working as a car designer, and you've got some photos of some really cool cars in here.

19:10Yeah, thank you. Well, that was a program that you're a little bit younger than I am, but when I was in junior high school, it was one of those life-changing things that you went to. It was very funny because at that time, you're shuffling back and forth, and it was girls stand down, boys only, come to the auditorium. And we went, and it was this Fisher Body competition, which was a scholarship competition again. And they'd send you four rubber wheels at scale, and you'd build a model about a car of the future. So I went through that whole process.

19:41Your shop teachers loved it. You know, so you're working with your metal teacher and your wood teacher and all these things. And you laminate this wood block together and put, you know, 100 coats of paint on it, and it has all the look of a piece of steel. So that was very successful. And then I went through, it was a third state, and then it was the first state, and then it was regional. And regional is quite special because they brought a group from the different regions together, and it happened, and you were a tech center in Warren, Michigan. Yes, the beautiful tech center.

20:13Oh, it's an unbelievable piece of architecture. And so that was really a very fortuitous time, again, that sort of pushed the direction into architecture as much as industrial or automotive design. You did so many houses in your career. How did your architecture differ from the sort of classic mid-century people like Eames and Saarinen and Gordon Bunshaft and so forth? How did it evolve from what they did? Well, I think it evolved in that I had strong anchoring in Frank Lloyd Wright, and so that was very important.

20:48I had the resources living in Milwaukee of having easy access to a lot of Wright, a lot of Sullivan, the whole Prairie School thing happening. And my houses sort of caught the imagination. They listened to the client, and a lot of my work early on was owner-built, and with this sort of hands-on proclivity that I had, had good relationships with these owner-clients. It wasn't, you know, do design, get a contractor, build it. A lot of those houses that you see were actually owner-built houses with me starting standing at their shoulder and giving them the guidance and comfort and strength to do that.

21:26And they were tight-budget houses, and you look at some of those, and the craftsmen that worked on the houses suddenly became clients for a house because they were so taken with the whole experience themselves. It was a very logical direction to lead or to go. The majority of these houses were in the desert, desert areas. What are some of the special considerations in designing a house that's in the desert? Well, I think, you know, where does the sun rise? Where does it set? What's the whole seasonal shift about it?

21:57How do you protect against the sun, yet enjoying the light? And so there's a whole focus on that that you can tell when you look at the work. And when you look in the book, there's also some work on the East Coast, and the houses spread back and forth across. But each one sort of has a relatedness to its place. And the big thing is, you know, to protect against the sun and between thermal mass and overhangs and orientation makes a good desert house. Are there any materials that you really can't use in the desert?

22:32Not really. You want to be very aware of, like I say, protecting your glass. And the desert's pretty friendly that way. I mean, there's a grounding. Taliesin West is a cue. The Desert Masonry, which was also done by Paul Schweiker and his famous Supton House. So there's that sort of rigor and feels very natural to the place. Because of it's taking what's there and really integrating it into a system for a house. In looking at a number of your houses, they have very interesting geometries.

23:05Right. And I was wondering how that relates to the placement with the sun. Do they form a practical kind of barrier in many cases? Yeah, they do. I mean, the general partie of the house always sets up a sort of a north-south orientation. And then you think about, you know, the whole passage of the sun during the day that organizes things. But the geometries, you know, I had enough between Wright and Goff. Like I say, those were big influences on what I did and what I enjoyed. Had a great fondness and made a pilgrimage to all the Louis Kahn work, of course.

23:39Just part of that sort of lineage of modernism. You know, I just have a passion for what I do and direction. And I had heard about the Rome Prize somewhere early on my journey. And I said, when I'm 40 years old, I'm going to get a Rome Prize. And that opened the door to Europe. And I lived in Rome at the American Academy. The centering of that whole pilgrimage was Scarpa's work, of course. And Carlos Scarpa became a heavy influence in the center period. And during that six months that I lived in Rome, I basically checked off everything on Scarpa's dance card.

24:15You know, he had passed already. But I had a full experience. And I'd drive up to somebody's house. And I'd be in the house 15 minutes later, you know. And I guess I don't go sort of skulking around in the bushes at a project. The best thing to do if you want to see a house is ring the doorbell. That's right. And introduce yourself. With that respect, it buys you a lot of good opportunities. Are there any houses out there, Will, that you wanted to see, but you never got to visit? How? That were on your list?

24:46No, my list. I work my list. I mean, like I said, I've always sort of had an eye out. I mean, I have a lot of respect for architecture. I'm interested in architecture as much as architects. And so I, you know, see work that inspires me or challenges my curiosity and gets my respect. And I'll go see it because that's the only way you can really get to architecture is by going and knocking on the door. And it's much easier to knock on the door than skulk around in the bushes.

25:18And safer too, yes. Yeah, and safer. But just the respect, you know, I hope that people respect my projects and my clients that much. And it's about that thing, you know, it's a serious endeavor for me to experience architecture. I'm continually learning, you know, it's just every time I still, after all these years, I still learn something new every day. You live in Portland now, known for architects like Pietro Bellucci. Who are some of the other Portland architects we should know?

25:50We live in a very early SLM tower. It was affordable housing. He did three towers here. You know, the Skidmore influence was a big, strong thing, as well as Belluschke. And Belluschke had great venue work. He did a lot of churches at the time. And it's a very thoughtful, credible architecture. Belluschke was a force. But it's interesting because Phoenix is based on a 300-foot city block. And Phoenix is really driven by the car. No pun intended.

26:20But here we have a 200-foot block, which makes all the difference in the world. They've got a really good streetcar system and mass transit system. And it's got a nice scale and character about it. It fits in the landscape very nicely. So for comparison purposes, for those of us that don't live in cities like that, what would New York be? Would that be a 200-square-foot model as well? It's a little bit smaller. Yeah, it's closer to 200 than 300. I mean, you know, 300 is, you know, for the Western city. All right.

26:50You know, scale to the car. The book is The Architecture of Will Bruder. And you can also see all of Will's houses at usmodernist.org slash Bruder. Thanks for talking with me again, Will. I appreciate it. I appreciate the continued interest and keep up the good works. That was George's conversation with Will Bruder.

Alex Josephson and Partisans

27:10Alex Josephson is the only Canadian to win a prestigious New York Design Fellowship at the Van Allen Institute. And he was named Canada's best emerging designer in 2015. He trained at Waterloo, apprenticed under Italian architect Massimiano Fucas in Rome, then dropped out of London's Architectural Association to co-found his firm Partisans in Toronto in 2012. The firm treats architecture as a political act and backs it up with revolutionary projects,

27:42like a hillside home of flowing wood forms embedded into the Ontario landscape and a landmark union station redevelopment. He's also written two books skewering Toronto's condo culture. George began his conversation with Alex Josephson by asking him to explain his firm's name. Alex, I'm struck with the name of your firm, Partisans, because it looks to rally under a particular cause. You've said before that architecture is more than building buildings.

28:14It's an increasingly political act, which I find fascinating. Explain more about that. How is architecture a political act? Yes, and I think this is a really incredible moment in which the collective conscious of architects and city builders around the world have realized that great projects aren't the result of this sort of singular ego. It's rather the collection of people that make a project possible, especially visionary projects. It takes a village and, you know, when I graduated from 10, 11 years of architecture school, I was confronted with this choice.

28:51Do we choose the egotistical route and call our firm PB&J, you know, like peanut butter and jam, which would have been our, you know, PB&J would have been our actual acronym. Or do we come up with a word that represents our ethos and our philosophy and manifesto and standpoint on architecture? And we'd always been fascinated with the political discourse around architecture and the relevance of architecture as a manifestation of people's feelings and cultures writ large.

29:23So we called ourselves partisans and partisans fight for a cause, in our case, great architecture, but making the improbable possible and extracting as much opportunity from every project and leveraging the power of the people involved, not just the architecture team. Well, that all sounds great, but how does it roll out in real life? Is it just a matter of engaging the people who live around the site or who are going to work there? I mean, how does it happen to get that kind of involvement that you're talking about?

29:54I mean, you have to rally stakeholders. You have to, you know, push your client to want more. It really is about finding the passion and the will to do things that people are scared of doing and being that cheerleader and confidence builder on any team. And I think that, you know, it happens at all scales. I mean, I actually believe this happens on every single architecture project. People don't want to talk about it. They want to talk about the triumphal final product.

30:25They want to talk about the beautiful party sketch that they post-rationalized after the fact. They want to talk about it on their own terms that are easy terms to market. And they don't want to talk about the tough times and the fight and the struggle to not only maintain a concept throughout the design process and delivery of a project, but to really rally the people who are going to advocate for the design along the way. Because it's not just the architect. There's no way that an architect on their own is going to get a concept completion without an amazing group of people who believe in it and them as a group as well.

31:01So that, I think, is becoming more and more of the discussion around architecture. We have that discussion right now about the Pritzker Prize. You know, people are saying, do we need this anymore? It really just celebrates a kind of monastic approach to the singular architect. Is that the right approach to rewarding good design and good architecture? Is it not a group of people? Weren't Denise Scott Brown, you know, wasn't she part of a team? And the prize tends to not look at that. And so going back to the group, architecture, I think, has always been a product of communities versus singular people.

31:39Well, sure. I mean, you know, football teams are collections of people and not just the quarterback. So you want to recognize everybody on the team. Let's go back to something you said earlier, convincing an owner to do something they don't want to do. What's an example of that? Well, I think that architects probably attract certain clients anyways. Certainly, I don't think people are coming to me for a commodified approach to architecture. But there are lots of great architecture firms and there's lots of ambitious clients.

32:12And the question is, are they willing to examine their blind spots? Are they willing to take a journey through the uncertain jungle of ideas and possibilities for their site? Or did they come with the preconceived notion of what they want to do? And is the architect just an extension of their creative mind and a tool? Right. Okay. I think that a lot of people come to architects because they know something extraordinary is possible, but they need and want the architect to show them something they didn't think was possible, but imagined might be.

32:45It's this possibility that I think is so rich. And the best projects probably come from that, in my opinion, just this idea that there is a faith in something spectacular, but the architect brings out the blind spots, these interesting possibilities that are surprising and delightful and make people say, gosh, I wish that's a great idea. Yeah, I wish I had thought about that. Yeah. And I think that that's an extraordinary feeling when you get it on a project.

33:16So if you were a burger place, you don't want people driving into your drive-thru and going, I'll have a double Whopper with cheese. You want them to drive up and you say to them over at the speaker, have you considered salad? I don't think I'm a burger joint, though. I think McDonald's or a burger joint is a different product than I'm offering. And most architects have to be very careful because artificial intelligence is going to make that product better and cheaper than you can. So you'd better find a way to build something that has more value than a burger.

33:50I don't think our studio delivers burgers, especially nothing burgers.

33:57That's good. That's good that you don't offer that. I'm not saying that we're some kind of arrogant, pretentious Michelin star restaurant, but I don't think that we're delivering burgers. Okay. When you started the firm and got going, you were told, I believe, was it by the Canadian Association of Architects, that you would have to work 10 years somewhere if you practiced in Canada initially? So way back, basically, I started architecture school at a place called the University of Waterloo, which is sort of, it's Canada's MIT.

34:30It's where, you know, the BlackBerry was invented. What the iPhone came from is the BlackBerry. And I went to that school. And so there was this incredible technology intersection with architecture that occurred there. And I worked all over the world. It was a co-op program. So I got to work in London. I got to work in Rome. I got to work in Los Angeles. I got to work in New York. And by the time I had done my third degree, I did my New York Prize Fellowship at the Van Allen Institute in 2009.

35:03And then I got into the AA a year later. And after spending a few weeks there, I just decided, you know what, I've got to get my life going. It was the end of the financial crisis or the depths of the financial crisis. And I moved back to Canada. I dropped out of the AA. And the authorities basically said they'd changed the rules. And all of my time at those co-ops, at those places around the world, didn't count anymore. And it was as if they'd taken years away from my life.

Licensing and Labor in Architecture

35:32So what'd you do? Well, I said, well, that's not fair. And I started a studio. I didn't call myself an architect. And the problem is we got a lot of attention for the work that we were doing. And you can't stop people from using the word architect, even if you don't. Yeah. And so I got into a lot of trouble with the authorities because I technically didn't have a license, but I had three and a half degrees in architecture. And so my partner and I, we brought on a third partner who had a license. And then over the next five years, I eventually got my license.

36:05But it was scrutinized and it was a really challenging experience. And I think that there's a big debate happening in England right now as well over the licensure processes that have developed over the decades. And there's been a reform process. But I think there's so many things happening in architecture right now from a labor and licensing perspective that it's an interesting story of mine and how it fits in. But the model is certainly set up so that people lose some of their best years interning. And the question is, you know, obviously, this is a pedagogy.

36:38The profession needs that. But the question is, you know, where have people gotten that experience and why isn't it valid is, I think, a nuance to it that isn't discussed enough. It seems like there's a general dissatisfaction worldwide with the architectural professional associations that are regulating things and representing the profession to the world. I think in general, there's this and I think I'm the worst person to complain about this.

37:08I have a thriving studio with projects at all scales. We've won our first international competition for a music and cultural center in the United States. And we're doing projects around the world now. So I am certainly not one to complain. But I think that I have certain perspectives on on things that I don't think are right from a Canadian point of view, because our our our country really is a culture of incumbency, whereas the United States is much more competitive in terms of its business practices. But I think the global phenomena architecture might be the only truly maybe it's not the only, but it's it really is truly a globalized profession.

37:46Now, you know, you can work anywhere in the world as an architect. And what's happening is you're seeing the pressures of companies that can operate at zero wages for some other younger staff competing against people in Canada who have to pay and should be paying a living wage. Yes. And so there's this incredible arbitrage that's happening around the world where firms that are operating in context that cost little or no to employ people or much less are competing against firms in jurisdictions where they pay people very well.

38:18And that globalized quality, I think, is creating a huge amount of pressure and an angst. The other problem is that architects haven't unionized. And the question is, is this the right time? You know, has it gotten so bad that there needs to be rules around international architecture practice? And it's very hard because every country has its own jurisdictions and sovereignty. So I would say it's a it's an uphill battle and the markets aren't closing their opening. There's just been multilateral agreements with Canada and England.

38:50There's been multilateral agreements with Europe and other jurisdictions. So I think that the problem is going to get much worse before it gets better, frankly. And and what you're seeing is is junior architects and intermediate architects working for very successful firms. You've just seen what happened that big in London, where they just summarily let off 200 people when they lost a few jobs in Saudi Arabia or something like this. But instead of growing responsibly, they grow explosively. They they suck up all the work.

39:20And then the moment anything happens after profits have been taken, they just lay everybody off. But the profit taking is enormous. Right. And that occurs at a very small strata at the top. It's not shared amongst the the staff generally. And there really isn't any retirement benefit for most firms. I mean, it's you're you're kind of depending on what you've saved independently. I think that right now you're seeing the bubbling of this, George, you're seeing the social kind of revolt of, I would say, the very important mass of talented workers that although they don't own a firm, they are delivering for all these firms.

39:59And if you don't have that team, you have nothing. You're just a talking head at the top, a stylist. Well, let me ask you this. Let's say that your firm, very talented, gets three enormous projects, you know, like 400 million, 500 million, 600 million comes along. You've got to expand. Right. Because you've got to hire on people to take these projects on. And then all of a sudden, one of them, maybe two of them goes away. So how do you respond to that kind of scenario differently than what big or any other firm would have to do given those circumstances?

40:39I mean, is there a better way to do that? Work comes and goes all the time. It depends on how you decide to run your studio. So if you want to exploit and hire more people than is required and at lower ranges than you should be, then you're forced, when you have these situations happen, to lay off a lot of people. The question is, how are you running your business and what are the choices? So I don't know. Like, we've lost projects. It didn't necessarily mean that I fired everybody.

41:11You know, I think it's a question of how do you utilize. Also, when you hire people, you're investing in them. It's a terrible thing to just swell and then invest in people also from an internal perspective and then lose all that. Because in the end, you are investing in people, too. And so I'm very careful about how we expand. I'm also very happy to partner with other firms to help deliver projects. And we've done that quite a few times. And so the question is, what kind of firm do you want to be? Do you want to grow to an infinitely large scale and just sort of be a machine in that way?

41:47Or do you want to do projects that you think are extraordinary and important for your clients in the cities and places in the countries that they exist in? And collaborate with local partners or international partners to deliver those projects where you need to have an expanded team. You know, you can have fruitful collaborations where you both make lots of money. Right. The question is just, it's an ethos question, right? And maybe our ethos is true to our name. It's a collective approach, maybe.

42:17So the alternative, if I'm hearing you correctly, to hiring up in large numbers when you get a bunch of new work is reaching out to existing firms and trying to tap into their extra capacity. It's one way. And that's part of the way we were operated in certain circumstances. It really depends on what you want to do in this world. When you bring on hundreds and hundreds of people, you become beholden to the process of getting more work like that.

42:47You are in that rat race. And so the question is, what is a sustainable scale? And how do you achieve, in our case, differentiated, dreamy, special work while not getting into the trap of having to take on a lot of garbage to pay for it? You know, that's a model that a lot of firms take on. They take on work that they don't put their names to. They take on work that they do in a lower quality or a lower capacity, a lower thought process so that they pay for other work.

43:17And I think that you can do that on the one hand. You can partner with other people on the other. We haven't just grown for the sake of growth. I think that growth for the sake of growth, more and more and more, it comes with all sorts of problems that you don't necessarily want. It's not just about profits. It comes with having to do that over and over again. And I wonder about that as a model. Well, let's shift to a slightly different topic.

Pumpkin Carving and Architectural Theses

43:45Very slightly. I understand that you are quite the pumpkin artist.

43:50I love it. Yeah. My Edward Munch scream, pumpkin is viral. Yes. So how long have you been doing these? I mean, like, I've always loved working with my hands. I guess pumpkin carving was always a thing here in Toronto. We have, like, a real fall. So Halloween is a big thing. And it was a big thing when I grew up. So, you know, pumpkin carving is near and dear to my heart. Now, how do you collect them? Isn't it a big thing in North Carolina? Is it a big thing? It's not at this level of what you're doing.

44:24I mean, we know how to take a kitchen knife and shoot out some triangular-shaped eyes and maybe a circular nose and some sort of teeth structure. And that's about it. So I imagine that you have a whole set of, like, almost medical instruments to make the kinds of gradations in your pumpkins. Not at all. I think I have, like, a melon, what do they call it? Like, the thing that makes balls out of melons? Melon baller. A melon baller. I think I use an orange melon baller from the 80s that I took from my mom.

44:57She's probably like, where is that thing?

45:01I've got it, mom. It's my pumpkin carving tool. Have you ever thought of carving a building into your pumpkin? Have you done a pumpkin building? I guess, like, some of our architecture has been accused of being sort of blobby sometimes. Yeah. Like, the pumpkin, I just think it's a beautiful shape. I mean, no, I haven't. I mean, buildings probably don't make anybody scared enough to bother on a pumpkin. But I'm pretty religious when it comes to, like, a pumpkin should be scary.

45:32It shouldn't depict. Maybe I should carve a Canadian condo extrusion tower into a pumpkin. Yeah. I mean, just think of the impact when you bring that into the client's conference room. Here is your project. It's a pumpkin. It's a pumpkin. I used to joke with a friend of mine, it's a pebble. Look, here's your project. It's a pebble. Yeah. I don't know where you found that. We have a good research team.

46:02So, also going back a little bit in time, when you were in college, you drew up a proposal for Mecca, which I thought was also fascinating, because Mecca has grown into this sort of huge, overdeveloped area of hotels and skyscrapers now. It has, yeah. I mean, nothing against the Muslims, but that seems more Vegas to me than religious. But that's just me looking at it. They would claim it's a democratization of the focus of prayer, given the intense pressure on the site for Hajj.

46:38Yeah. But I think a lot of those towers have become luxury experiences for VIPs and stuff like that. But I find Mecca and the history of the Hajj fascinating. I started architecture school, my second year of architecture school started on September 11th, 2001. A date not known for anything. It really changed the way we saw the world. And I was fascinated as a kid growing up in Toronto to really understand the history of the Abrahamic religions.

47:09I was just like, why is everybody fighting? And I found it so fascinating that everyone, well, every religion has its own prayer ritual. But the architecture and the rituals of prayer kind of are an architecture of its own. And this idea that everybody is focused and orients themselves around the earth towards Mecca kind of reminded me as like the center of a galaxy, that kind of gravitational center and singularity. So in a way, what I did for my thesis was say, well, the shortest line gravitationally, physically to Mecca is actually through the earth, not on the surface of the earth.

47:48It's looking through the earth. And it was this idea of a kind of imaginary gravitational singularity at the center of it that connected everybody. And I thought that was a very beautiful concept. And my thesis was really an exploration of the connection between the three religions versus the conflict. And maybe there really hasn't been a moment more appropriate to talk about it. I mean, today is everything is much more even fraught than maybe it was even 25 years ago.

48:20The conflicts today are potentially much worse. So we'd better start to figure out a way to reconcile. We had better because we're in a lot of trouble. Yes. And maybe architecture can help. But I think that it's a stretch. Well, what are the partisans going to rebel about next? What are they going to take on as a cause? Well, we plant seeds. I think that that's a good question. Like, I'm not waiting for projects to be given to me on a silver platter, George.

48:52Like, for example, we pursued and we supported projects that we are now involved in that didn't even exist when we first recognized the opportunities. So, for example, the Hearn, which is the largest decommissioned power plant in North America, a matrix of steel, 1,100 feet long by 250 feet tall by 400 feet deep, twice the size of the Tate Modern in London. And we recognized that by donating to a dinner in 2014 to support the idea of doing something with the Hearn in Toronto.

49:29And then that led to us collaborating with the Luminato Festival of the Arts and transforming it into a temporary and modular arts festival inside the building. And then that led to most recently the vision for a complete city in a building, this kind of modular idea of a community in a shed. And the matrix, the infrastructure is there, but it's just waiting for the vision to take place.

49:59And so that's an example of many projects that we've been really cultivating for a decade. And we've made them our projects because we are interested and we love them. Now, obviously, the next things that we're going to work on, maybe it will be because people saw our pumpkin carving skills and want us to come to another country to do their work. But I think that the most exciting things that we're doing next are projects that we've been invested in for a decade. And this idea of flash-fried architecture is the opposite of our ethos.

50:33Tell me about flash-fried architecture. I have not tasted that yet. You haven't? What do you mean? You haven't been down the high line?

50:41Is that an example? Well, I think that it might be more considered than that. I'm just being pugnacious. But the world now is about fast, fast, fast. You see these projects popping up all over the world. Some of them, they crop up faster than the feasibility studies needed to even show them that they were never possible in the first place. I don't want to say which ones. It's obvious which ones come to mind. But this idea that you come up with this crazy, formal, unidentified flying architecture that lands somewhere, and then you build it, and it's this sort of exotic-looking thing that has nothing to do with its surrounding culture or purpose whatsoever.

51:23It doesn't even function that well. It's, I think, more and more common. But that's a result of maybe competition architecture. Sure. Okay. Well, let me ask you a question in regard to that. So, starting with this thing that's huge and giant and expensive and doesn't fit with anything around it, how do you distinguish between something like that for today and something like the Eiffel Tower, which matched all those characteristics over 100 years ago? Yeah, I think you're right. It's a good counterpoint. I love the folly. I like these things that stick out and don't necessarily make sense.

51:57But I think it's a lot different when you're giving a gift to society, like the Eiffel Tower versus a condo tower that just looks funny. Okay. Or a bunch of VIPs. Yeah. Or an office tower, right? Like the folly of the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty or the CN Tower exists on a kind of civic visionary level that's a gift to society. I'm talking about architectures that are, they're not gifts to society, they're gifts to investors. So, I think you have to differentiate between the two.

52:28That's a good point. That's a very good point. Alex, thank you so much for talking with me. It's been a real pleasure. George, thank you, man. That was Alex Josephson talking with George Smart.

Greg Case on Hubert Bebb

52:39Greg Case is an advertising guy from the Southeast who, like us, became obsessed with modernism. The result is Smoky Mountain Modern, the architecture of Hubert Bebb in Postcards, a book that resurrects the mid-century motels, restaurants, and roadside buildings that defined Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Bebb studied under Mies van der Rohe, moved to the Smokies, and spent four decades designing modernist buildings, including the viewing tower at Clingman's Dome in North Carolina and the iconic Sun Sphere at the 1982 Knoxville World's Fair.

53:15Here's George and Greg Case. Greg, when I think of Gatlinburg, the first thing I think of is Dollywood. Oh, yeah. Dollywood is indeed the great ambassador of the state of Tennessee and was born in a little place near Pittman Center, which is near Gatlinburg, just to the east. So, yes, Dollywood is one of the more popular theme parks in the country, actually. I didn't realize until recently that she didn't build Dollywood.

53:47It was actually something called Rebel Railroad, originally, built in 1961. Yes, and it's been known as a couple of different things, in addition to that, Gold Rush Junction, for a few years. And I think that may have been the name immediately before Dolly acquired it. Yeah, right after that, it was Silver Dollar City, Tennessee. That's correct. Silver Dollar City. Some folks started referring to it as Silver Dolly City for a while. You've been studying the architecture of Hubert Bebb.

54:19Was he involved at all in the theme park there? No, not in Silver Dollar City or Dollywood. His work was more motels and restaurants, for the most part, and a few attractions. There was caverns near Sevierville, forbidden caverns, that he did an entry building for. But mostly his work was commercial and a lot of residential as well in East Tennessee. So what was Hubert Bebb's style like as a modernist?

54:51Very angular. Some would say almost rustic modern because of the heavy use of native stone, work, and textured surfaces. And Bebb was known for very large roof lines, reportedly somewhat to mimic the Appalachian skyline, and very asymmetrical, angular roof lines. How did you first discover him? At age six. Although I didn't know about Hubert at age six, but I was fascinated by what I saw of his work at that age.

55:25Our family, of course, being in East Tennessee, visited Gatlinburg quite often. And every time I would see buildings with his design style, I didn't necessarily think about who may have designed them, but I thought they were just so dark cool that over my young life and adult life, I finally came to find out who it was that had that vision in Gatlinburg. And then from there on, did more research and did the project that I just published a couple of years ago. But that was a long time between riding around as a kid and when you published the book in 2024.

56:01So what was happening in the middle? Well, off to career in various places around the Southeast and really just studying modern architecture in general, not necessarily Bebb and specific. But really, about 10 years ago, I started taking an interest in old postcards of Gatlinburg that showed motels, restaurants, and that sort of thing that I thought might be a Bebb design. So if I saw one out on eBay or in an antique store or something like that,

56:32I would buy it and put it in a loose leaf binder. And that went on for a period off and on, about 10 years, until about four years ago, I decided, you know, why don't I take this to the next level and see if I can put together a volume in a sort of a nostalgic travel theme with postcard images and managed to meet with some of Hubert's associates once I found out who he was to validate that work. And that was the genesis of that project.

57:04How many postcards have you collected? About 80, of which about, I would say, 75 or so are in the book that I published. That's one of the more interesting things about this book, is that it's unusual because you're using postcards to tell the story. Correct. And one of the reasons I did that was by the time I really wanted to do something about Hubert, because I saw the gap in the literature. Nothing had really been published about his work. I could have gone with a photographer just to do a photo essay type thing,

57:38but that really wouldn't have adequately portrayed the breadth of his work because so many of the buildings that he designed are demolished or succumbed to a big wildfire back in 2016 that took a lot of buildings at Gatlinburg, actually. Or there was really no archive, a visual archive of his work from which to draw, except for the postcards. So I purposely constrained myself to that theme so that someone could take the book, go to downtown Gatlinburg, and with the map in the back,

58:11sort of take a nostalgic journey and see where a building would have been if it's demolished or if it's remodeled, what it looked like when it was new, or if it's still extant and still there. Did you ever figure out what happened to all his archives? Did they go to a university or did they get destroyed? Or are they in a storage unit somewhere? What happened to them? There is an archive. The firm that he founded in 1966 called Community Tectonics has an archive,

58:41but it's all floor plans and some elevation drawings and perspective drawings. And those are housed in the McClung collection up in Knoxville, which I have looked at. And as a matter of fact, I just recently acquired the digital version just two weeks ago, which unfortunately I just got two weeks ago, so I couldn't really incorporate any of those drawings. However, I am working on curating the perspective drawings from that, potentially for yet another separate volume.

59:15Oh, excellent, excellent. Yeah. How many houses of his still survive? Lots. And that's yet another potential for another volume. And I've curated about 28. I know where they are, what they look like, and have even compiled a 100-page PDF of images for positioning, basically, in case I decide to take that on as well. Mostly, of course, sprinkled throughout East Tennessee. And centered around Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and Sevierville.

59:49Hubert's houses are amazing. Some of them are quite large. In fact, two U.S. senators commissioned Hubert to build buildings up from Tennessee. One was Estes Kefauver, who was in the Senate in the 50s, and Howard Baker, who was in the Senate in the 70s and 80s. Famous for the Watergate hearings. Yes, indeed. Both modernist buildings.

The 1982 Knoxville World's Fair

1:00:14And I was surprised to learn that Bebb also designed the Sun Sphere for the 1982 Knoxville World's Fair. Yeah. About a 200-foot-tall tower, a truss-type tower with a large gold sphere at the top. At that time, that was 1982, of course, and Bebb was kind of getting into declining health at that point. And had turned over the reins of community tectonics to William Denton, who was his partner.

1:00:47And the story goes that late in the 70s, Denton and Bebb were working with a restaurateur in Knoxville on a project. And a guy was on the planning committee for the fair. And Hubert wanted to know if they had decided on a theme structure, like the Atomium in Brussels and the Eiffel Tower in Paris and all that good stuff. And they had not. So Bebb and Denton went right back to the office and said, why not take a stab at this? Let's sit down, do some drawings.

1:01:19The theme of the fair is energy for the future. And they came up with what was to be the Sun Sphere and managed to get a meeting the next day. One thing led to another, and the building is there and has become the signature structure in downtown Knoxville. What's at the top of it? Is it a restaurant like at a lot of the top of towers? Yes, the city of Knoxville now owns it and has an observation tower open to the public. And mostly now it's used as, I think there may be some food service there, limited food service.

1:01:53But it's used mostly as an event space. A lot of people use it for wedding receptions, that sort of thing. If I'm right, the 82 World's Fair in Knoxville was the last one in the United States, right? I think so, actually, now that I think about it. I don't recall one after that. Because it was not a success. Well, actually, it was. It was very well attended. From everything I've read, the actual attendance of the event met all expectations.

1:02:24And the legacy of the event, the site was in a really sort of a run-down creek bed between the University of Tennessee and downtown Knoxville. So, the legacy of that event has been very positive. It's a beautiful greenway now with water features, walkways, an amphitheater, and, of course, the Sun Sphere. I believe it's the smallest town ever to have a World's Fair. That's probably correct. Because Knoxville is not that big, say, compared to Paris or Tokyo or Dubai, something else like that.

1:02:59Do you know how they got the fair to begin with? Sort of sketchy on that. It was the brainchild of a local Tennessee politician, Jake Butcher, which, incidentally, Hubert designed a house for. But it was a more colonial with the colonnade and that sort of thing. Butcher ran for governor in 1978 and was president of the United American Bank in Knoxville. I'm not sure what his thinking was as far as it was probably very business-oriented.

1:03:30But, yeah, Jake was the lead mover and shaker for that event in the early 80s. Yeah, I'm looking it up now. It said they had 11 million people that attended. That's pretty good. And Knoxville, the metro, I don't think, is much more than a half a million. If you look at the metro area right now, it's sort of a medium-sized city. Are there any structures other than the Sun Sphere that survived from the World's Fair? Very few. Other than the greenways and the trails and that sort of thing and a lake that was called Waters of the World, there's an amphitheater that survived.

1:04:09Those are really the only two structures that actually made it. I know the amphitheater was voted one of the top 15 architectural works of East Tennessee by that chapter's AIA. Yeah. But I'm sorry to learn that it's gone. Yeah, yeah. I mean, 1982 was 40-some-odd years ago, but that's fairly young for a building or a structure. Right. Well, so many of those buildings were really intended to be temporary and were not really that well built, quite honestly.

1:04:43Even the American Pavilion, which was probably the larger of the pavilions, was taken down really no more than two or three years after the fair. So how do you see the legacy of BEB in American architecture? Really, in East Tennessee, I really wish that the area could have embraced more of its modernist heritage. But, you know, things come and go. Things move on. But really, the biggest legacy is community tectonics.

1:05:16Again, he founded in 1966. And BEB mentored so many young architects during his career since he moved to Gatlinburg in 1950 that that legacy still lives on. Every now and then, you'll still see a building that comes up that has one of the design cues, the angular roof lines, the window walls, that sort of thing, either in residential or in commercial design. And community tectonics today, still going strong, two of BEB's mentees, I guess, if that's a word, still run the company out of Knoxville.

1:05:51And they are very well known for their energy efficiency in their buildings. That's really interesting. What is your favorite building of BEB's? Oh, that's a good one. There are so many. The motels, when I was a little guy, the roof lines on BEB's motels. I think if I had to pick one, the Chalet Inn, which is still standing, thank goodness, I think to me is one of probably the finest examples of mid-century modern commercial design left in East Tennessee.

1:06:23It sits just above town, beautiful views from up there. And the angles and windows in that building are just amazing. And I'm really glad the owners have kept up well with it. It still looks great today. The book is Smoky Mountain Modern, The Architecture of Hubert Bebb in Postcards. Thanks for talking with me, Greg. Well, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity, George. Great to talk to you again. You just heard George's conversation with Greg Case.

Susie Cash and Off-Grid Living

1:06:52Susie Cash has a graduate degree in architecture from NC State. She cut her teeth at Frank Harmon's firm in Raleigh and then walked away from conventional practice to build her own life. Living full-time in a bus she customized and designing off-grid cabins and solar-powered homes. Susie documents every step of it for nearly 170,000 followers on Instagram as the DIY babe under the handle at FemBuilds. She tackles everything, wiring, plumbing, and custom cabinetry.

1:07:25And she's the author of a new book, Off-Grid, the DIY guide to off-grid survival projects.

1:07:33This is a really interesting interview because apparently I'm now in a bus. I'm in Susie's bus. And we're sitting here at the table looking at each other and I'm looking around and it's really fabulous. So, Susie, let's start by telling me about this bus. Welcome to my bus. Yeah. I bet you normally don't do podcasts in other people's homes. Not on wheels. Yeah, yeah. So, this is my bus that I've been slowly building out over the past four years.

1:08:06I bought it in Santa Cruz, California. And just, it started off as my little adventure mobile and then slowly I started to make it a more full-time abode. Yeah. It's just been a passion project and it really is something that got my toes into like more sustainability and living off-grid and living a more self-sufficient lifestyle. Yeah. And it got me more into building rather than simply designing as an architect.

1:08:39And it's just been a transformative project that I've been slowly chipping away at over the years. Now, one design feature I noticed behind you is that the hallway is also the shower. Yes. So, how does that work? Well, you have to really maximize every inch in a bus. Yeah. Especially because I like luxury and there's not much space for that. So, I had to make space. So, these walls are actually micro-cement. Okay. So, they're waterproof, but it looks like plaster, which has a nice effect.

1:09:11And then the floor comes up. There's a shower pan underneath. Then you hang two curtains on the side to cover the open walls. That's great. I can see some houses might benefit from that feature, right? Right? Right. If you're heading to the kitchen, just take a quick shower in the hallway before you get your coffee in the morning. Yeah. I can see that working. And you can shower on your way to bed, too. Yeah.

Sustainable Systems in the Bus

1:09:35Now, what are some of the sustainable features of the bus? Like, does it have its own energy sources? Or how does that part work? Yeah. It's a totally self-sufficient little bug on wheels. So, I have solar on the roof, which charges my batteries that are in the garage, which is underneath the bed. I also have a battery-to-battery charger. So, when my car is running, the engine is running, that is a supplementary source to charge my batteries. I have a 75-gallon water tank underneath the bus.

1:10:09So, I fill that up about once a week or once every week and a half. So, since I have limited resources and I have to be mindful of how much water and energy I use, that right there really creates a more sustainable way of living because you have to be aware of how much you're consuming and just really keep track of it. Okay. I also have a composting toilet. That's another thing that a lot of people might not think about when they're living a more sustainable lifestyle is you become more responsible for your waste and the things that you produce.

1:10:47So, I love my composting toilet. I actually just made a video about it yesterday on social media. And I don't think I would go back to a conventional flushing toilet. I just love my composting toilet so much. Tell me about your social media account, which is very popular. Yeah, I love to inspire people to build things and to sort of take control of their environment and become more aware that we can all build the home and the place and the environment that we dream of.

1:11:24So, on my social media account, I feature different projects, some how-to videos or just showcase what I'm working on and what I'm building. And I get a lot of messages that people are inspired or they use my video to start a project that they've been wanting to work on or just a lot of positive feedback from people that are excited about building. And we were talking before the recording today about your early career. You were a volleyball player. You were a champion jump roper, right?

1:11:56Yes. And what led you to go to architecture school? Well, believe it or not, I was drawing floor plans when I was five years old. Like, I know a lot of people are doing the little houses from the outside, but I was just always sort of obsessed with designing my dream home. And I still have some of the drawings that my mom saved. But I was always really interested in designing houses. Like, when I was younger, I would help friends do interior designs of their rooms or their bathrooms.

1:12:29And then also my dad, he renovated a lot of houses growing up, and I would help him. So I was sort of introduced to the building aspect of that. So I knew I wanted to do something design-related. And I thought about interior design. Then I applied to architecture school. Eventually got in. Yeah. And just really, really went towards that path. Where was that? NC State. At NC State. Okay. Yep. For undergrad and grad school.

1:12:59And was it there you met Frank Harmon? Yes. I met Frank. And I think he was a reviewer of mine when I was an undergrad. And then I was like, I got to take his class. So when I enrolled into graduate school there, I enrolled in his craft and tectonics lecture. And then also took some of his studios. Okay. And then you went to work for him at some point, right? I did. As soon as I got out of school, I went straight to Frank's office.

1:13:31Actually, before, I think I interned there like the summer, maybe in between grad school years, I think. And then eventually worked for him full time for several years, all the way through his retirement. And I helped him actually close all his projects that he was still working on and helped him close his office. And he actually helped me get a firm off the ground that I started with, Tina Govan and Paul Drake. Yeah. And we had a little, the band got together for a couple years.

1:14:05Yeah. And we had a firm called Somos Design. And we focused on community-based, community-oriented projects, schools, Montessori schools, and some houses. And Frank sort of helped us get that off the ground, too. Oh, that's cool. Yes. That's cool. Yes. So after Somos, what happened? After Somos, I moved to California. I was actually having a lot of health issues, digestive issues, that I could not figure out

1:14:35what was going on with me for a couple years. So I decided to move to California and go to school to study Ayurveda so that I could heal my gut because I was just not having luck with Western medicine. I did that for a year, actually healed my gut, like it literally works. And that's where I bought this bus and sort of started going on a new journey. Yeah. I started working for a firm out there where they primarily did natural building.

1:15:08So I worked on a few houses that were straw bale construction, which was really cool. And I just got really excited about natural building and unconventional building. So when I eventually came back to North Carolina, I was really on this trajectory of like excited about unconventional living and natural building. I worked with my brother-in-law for a couple of years, free life vans. They build custom vans, van conversions.

1:15:38So I helped them build out a lot of vans, which also gave me a lot of wisdom and knowledge to complete my own bus building and started taking more week-long immersion workshops, learning about cob, learning about earthen floors, learning more about straw bale construction. So, yeah, I'm just sort of diving down this natural build, unconventional build, intentional community, off-grid living type of world.

1:16:09And I'm having a lot of fun with it. And that takes us to your new book. My new book? The DIY Guide to Off-Grid Survival Projects Step-by-Step Manual to Achieve Self-Sufficiency, Prepare for Emergencies, and Build a Sustainable Life with Lasting Confidence. You got it. Yeah. By Susie Cash. Yes. This is great. Yeah, I'm really excited about it. It's my first book I've written, and I love the process. Everything about creating a book, I had so much fun with it.

1:16:41And it's doing really well. I had a great lunch. Oh, great. Yeah.

Getting Started with Off-Grid DIY

1:16:45Now, people who are thinking about this, what are some of the first few things they should do to really get off to a good start? Of going off-grid? Yeah. So, I would say the first thing to do is just start small. So, if you're thinking about living off-grid, you don't have to do everything all at once. It doesn't have to be this extreme jump where all of a sudden you're living in the woods and you're just surviving. Yeah. Like one of those shows on cable TV, right? Right, right. This is not Naked and Afraid.

1:17:15So, you can start small. If you're a very beginner and you've never done any of these projects before, you can start by setting up a simple rainwater harvesting system to water your garden. Or you can wire a single solar panel to power lights on an outdoor shed or something like that. Just to start to get you comfortable with building and doing projects and getting familiar with the different systems. So, starting small is a big one. I talk a lot in the beginning about the mindset piece.

1:17:46So, you're definitely going to stumble and run up against obstacles and I feel like that's part of the self-growth that you have to go to in order to become a more self-sufficient human. And that's part of off-grid living is that you become responsible for your own resources and you become responsible for managing everything that keeps you alive. And so, you start to build this self-confidence and this self-belief that I feel like is truly

1:18:22the foundation for off-grid living because once you believe in yourself to be able to provide for yourself with these systems that help you survive, then you can do anything. Then that starts to snowball and you really become a highly capable human and you can count on yourself. So, I think just starting to build things, whether it be small or big, just start and you start to believe in yourself. Now, I know a lot of people who are interested in sustainability want to do some of those

1:18:55things like catching rainwater. But if they live in a house in a suburb, there are lots of rules about that. You know, what you can capture, what you can drink, right? The cities want you to run all the water through their systems. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can even use some rainwater harvesting for, for example, for flushing toilets. So, you can use it as water that's going to just offset some of your consumption, not

1:19:28necessarily drinking it if that's a little too complex for you. But yeah, such as irrigation or flushing toilets, that's a great place to start. Yeah. Because, for example, I was just thinking about this yesterday, actually, how the average person drinks about half a gallon to one gallon of water a day. Okay. And every time you flush the toilet, you're flushing 1.6 gallons of water. I didn't know that. So, it just does not make sense to me that we are spending so much of our water usage on getting rid of our waste over hydrating our bodies.

1:20:02It's just, it's bizarre to me how much the allocation of water that the typical person uses. So, yeah, even something as simple as collecting rainwater to flush your toilets, I think it's a great idea. Now, do you think most of the people who read your book are going to look at a house-type structure as a residence, or do you tell them also in here how to convert a vehicle to a residence? It's applicable to both. It's a little more oriented towards a physical structure with, you know, like a house or a

1:20:36shelter with an actual foundation, not wheels. But it's applicable to both. So, for example, the whole solar section, you can do on either a roof of a house or a roof of a vehicle. Rainwater harvesting is not as applicable to a vehicle just because you really need a tank to do it. But, you know, there's sections in here about food generation, which, you know, is more about land and how to build your own composting toilet, which is applicable to both vehicles.

1:21:09So, yeah, there's something for everyone in here. And it's this book really outlines things in an approachable way. So, it's good for beginners who are just getting started. And it's also a good reference guide for more seasoned builders or DIYers. Like, I've even picked up this book a few times since I've written it as a reference tool for like, now what was that calculation again? Or like, what's the next step in this project? It's just nice to have a reference guide in your back pocket.

1:21:43Susie's Instagram account is FemBuilds. That's F-E-M-M-E-B-U-I-L-D-S. And the book is The DIY Guide to Off-Grid Survival Projects. Thanks for talking with me, Susie. Thank you. Thanks for listening. U.S. Modernist Radio is underwritten by the Brent R. Harris Charitable Trust, restorer of Richard Neutra's Kauffman Desert House in Palm Springs, and six other houses in California. By the Ife Jones Conservancy, preserving the legacy of modernist architecture in Northwest Arkansas,

1:22:16ifejonesconservancy.org. And by Diane Bald and the Budman Family, restoring significant architecture in Toronto, Los Angeles, Malibu, and Palm Springs. Visit usmodernist.org's massive archives to listen to past shows, discover documentation of 25,000 significant modernist houses, and access 5 million pages of classic 20th century architecture magazines. U.S. Modernist Radio is produced by Soundtracks Recording Studios in Raleigh, North Carolina. Our theme song is performed by George Smart and Robinson Earl

1:22:47with guest research by Bobby Morris. Got a guest to suggest for the show? Writer at bobby at usmodernist.org. U.S. Modernist Radio is a production of Modernist Archive Incorporated, a nonprofit educational archive for the documentation, preservation, and promotion of modernist residential design. I'm Tom Guild, George, and I'll be back soon with another anti-seize edition of U.S. Modernist Radio.

1:23:17Thank you.