#466/AIA's Carole Wedge + Julia Jamrozik / Coryn Kempster + Darcy Frank MacKay

Welcome to U.S. Modernist Radio

0:00Hi, I'm Herb Green, and you're 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.

0:35I'm Tom Gild. Last fall, following a few years of leadership drama, the AIA chose our first guest, Carol Wedge, as its next CEO for its 98,000 members. Later, we'll talk with architects Julia Jemrozik and Corin Kempster. They make swing sets and pipe installations and wrote a book about kids who grew up in modernist homes. And our last guest, Darcy Frank McKay, is one of those lucky kids. She grew up in a 17,000-square-foot Pittsburgh house with a rooftop dance floor and an indoor swimming pool designed by none other than Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer.

1:15J. Carter Brown of the National Gallery of Art called this modest home the Frank House, the nation's crown jewel. And now, here's your host, the crown prince of the cautionary tale, Mr. Modernism, George Smart.

Reaching younger modernism fans

1:30Hey, thanks, Tom. I do love all our listeners. All of you are wonderful, loyal, generous, dependable. You show up to our events. You donate. You bring friends. And they bring friends. But I have a confession. It turns out our core supporters are, well, how do I put this, seasoned, distinguished, senior. The kind of folks who remember when phones were attached to walls and schools had no cops and metal detectors.

2:02Please know I'm not complaining about you. You are wonderful. But somewhere out there, there are millennials and Gen Z who also love modernism. In fact, they're the largest group right now buying up modernist furniture for their apartments and starter homes. And U.S. modernists wants to reach these people, too. We want a 20-something to care about our mission while holding one of those enormous iced coffees that cost $9 and lasts all day. We want a 30-something with a baby wrapped in baby bjorn to suggest a location for our next party or tour.

2:35We've tried social media for years with some of the best people, and it just didn't work. So here is my pitch, listeners. Be our not-so-secret agents. You have children. You have grandchildren. You have a nephew who does something with computers that no one understands. Talk to them. Tell them about us. And then, and this is the important part, tell me what they say. How do we reach them? What would they like U.S. modernists to offer? You can call in, write in, text.

3:06We'll even take a handwritten letter. Telegram? Incredibly yes. You can still send a telegram at 1-800-TELEGRAM. Really? Indeed. However you send them, we need your ideas, your insider intelligence, your reports from the front lines of the under-40 world. Because documentation, preservation, and advocacy doesn't stop with us. It needs new hands, new energy, and new people who will eventually become the loyal, generous, and beautifully seasoned.

3:39Reach out. Our hailing frequencies are open. George at usmodernist.org or 919-740-8407. 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.

4:06IfeJonesConservancy.org. And by Diane Bald and the Budman Family, restoring significant architecture in Toronto, Los Angeles, Malibu, and Palm Springs.

Carol Wedge and the AIA

4:22Like the plot of a famous Broadway play, Carol Wedge started in the mailroom at Shepley Bullfinch, and she retired, 37 years later, as its CEO. The company was on the Commonwealth Institute's Top 100 Women-Led Businesses list, 12 years running. In 2025, the AIA board unanimously selected her as the organization's next chief executive officer. Carol Wedge recently sat down for a conversation with George Smart.

4:53Carol, do you remember a play from way back called How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying? I remember it as a movie, yes. The movie was 1967. The play was 1952, I believe. And the plot was about a guy named J. Pierpont Finch, who rises up in this company to become head of the company. And he starts out in the mailroom. And understand, that's where you started out at Shepley Bullfinch. Good story.

5:25Would you like to hear a little bit about that? Yeah. So the preamble is I graduated in a recession, so there were no jobs in architecture. Our horrible business model is that people were letting people go. So I worked in finance in New York City for four years at an investment company. I was basically an admin for some senior investment managers. And they liked me and they taught me about business and let me check their files and make sure they were ready for presentations. So interestingly, I learned a little bit about clients and a little bit about marketing and presenting information to high-powered people.

6:01And then I realized I didn't want to be any of the VPs there when I grew up. So I'm back to architecture school in Boston, the Boston Architectural Center, now college. It's a work-study program. I don't know if you know it. But basically, you work during the day, or at least then you did. And you go to school at night. So I thought, I haven't worked in a firm yet. I need to see what this really feels like before I fully commit. And so, you know, the work curriculum office said, oh, there's a couple firms looking for people. And I went to Sheppley and I interviewed.

6:32And they offered me a job in the mailroom. And my favorite story about that is that I would go to the post office every morning and get a couple bags of mail and open it and read it all because I'm a fast reader. So in 1986, there was no fax machine. There was no email. I read all the mail coming to the firm. So it was invitations to pursue a project. Congratulations, you've been awarded this important project. Or we're not very happy with you. Or our lawyers will be in touch with your lawyers.

7:04So as a very junior person architecturally, I got a lens into what was going on in the firm. And, you know, that role is running prints and helping people. And carrying boards and models to interviews with the principals. So I got this kind of amazingly useful view into, like, soup to nuts, the workings of a firm. And then after about a year, it was kind of a transition, you know, as an onboarding intern position. Like, take some person who looks like they have a good attitude, put them in the mailroom and see if they thrive, and then find a place for them on projects.

7:39Which they did. And then Shepley kind of raised me as an architect, and the BAC educated me as an architect. And some number of years later, let's see how many years later. 14 years later, I was made a principal. Okay. Four years after that, I was asked to be the president. And I was the president and CEO for 17 years. Wow. Yeah. Well done. 37 short years at Shepley Bolton. I mean, I think the difference between a smaller or mid-sized firm is that you kind of have to jump in and do everything. And larger firms, it's really team-centric or project-centric.

8:12So, you know, you're working on a project with six, eight, ten other people and all these other consultants. And so it's like a little mini microculture around that building. So I felt like every building I worked on was almost like a different firm. It was like a different group of people and a different client and what they were worried about. So I was never bored, that's for sure. Now, I read that you interviewed one time at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill on a particularly bad day. I did. Yeah. What happened that day? They were laying people off.

8:42It was 1986. It was a very bad economy. And firms across the country were reducing their headcount. And the HR person said, I'm so sorry this is your introduction to architecture. It's usually a very lovely field. And since then, I've met lots of people at SOM. And, you know, they're a great firm, but timing is everything, as they say. Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, you're coming into AIA now, of course, with this big background. How do you translate project management and executive management of a firm to managing a professional association, which has projects, but they're not the same kind of projects as when you're with a firm?

9:22I think my board experience, I was on the board of the BAC, Wentworth Institute, a construction company called Windover, and the AIA board. So, I think having those governance perspectives were particularly helpful to me. But it's really, you know, the client is the members. The client is the members of AIA. And they're quite diverse, and they work in all different kinds of disciplines and markets and projects and interests. And so, I think they're really united by their love of design and the power of architecture to influence our communities and our lives.

9:56So, it's very exciting. But it's similar to a firm in that you need a strategy. You need to know where you want to go and why. Every idea can't be equally valuable. Right. So, it helps if you have a strategic direction to kind of guide you. And as I joined in December, a task force was just finishing up a strategic planning process. So, I feel pretty lucky that they've done the process, and I can start to live into it with the many talented people that work at AIA National and all the local components and all the local boards.

10:29And the strategic plan is very thoughtful, but quite practical. You know, it's about practice. It's about firm and professional success. And what does that look like in the future? And we can talk about technology and shifting the global economy and all of those things. Advocacy, you know, a louder voice for the profession. So, making your podcast more visible to people. And advocating for caring about architecture and housing and all the things that our communities need. And then really, probably the most intense thing right now is climate.

11:00You know, there's crazy storms, there's tornado warnings in Washington today, like kind of insane snow in New England, where I've lived for a long time. So, resiliency and regenerative design and focusing on how do we design for this climate change future. And then, of course, equity, you know, encouraging people to join the profession and find their way and realize that there is a path from school through your profession. And I think there's so much that AIA and all its local and national chapters can help students and young people find a creative future.

11:35So, those are kind of the big buckets. But we also kind of shepherd really passionate people, like yourself, you know. How do people show up with their passions for architecture or modernism or climate and really feel engaged and supported by AIA? Now, one of the things I've noticed, because I'm the nerd that's read most of the AIA magazines for the last 80 years, is that about every 10 years, architects have this existential crisis where they're frustrated that the public doesn't understand what they do and doesn't appreciate them.

12:11And every single time they come to the same conclusion, and that is they form a committee, and the committee says, let's elevate the public. And this tends to fail. So, how do you get around this? How do you get the architecture field to where the public is so that there's a better match? Yeah, I think it's like, what's my metaphor? I think it has to be authentic, right? So, I grew up in Montclair, New Jersey. I took every art class given to a child in Montclair, every museum class and drawing class and art class in school.

12:49And then I watch our two daughters, who are adults now, and their exposure to art in school was incredibly minimal. They took a photography class. They had a great photography professor. But art was basically eliminated to the test and very much more practical, I'll say traditional focus, but less creative focus. And so, I think kind of the beginning of it is exposing young people to creativity and art and Legos and building and looking at buildings and thinking about how they affect them.

13:21I don't know if you remember this kind of an ad campaign, but it was an Engage the Community. Maybe it was one of these 10 years existential crises, but it was, what's your favorite building? And it was this huge outpouring to people across the United States, maybe even around the world. What's your favorite building? And people voted on their favorite buildings. And it got people engaged in talking about buildings. I also think sometimes we make architecture seem remote, and it has its own language, and sometimes it feels inaccessible to the common person.

13:56Absolutely, yes. And so, you know, I think figuring out how to open up the conversation. I love Sharon Sutton, who teaches, says, communities know what they need, they just don't know how to get it. Or I love Rural Studio, of like looking at what communities need and getting students to engage in building, whether it's community centers or a ramp for a home. But sometimes I think architects are talking to each other more than they're engaging their community. So I think, for me, that's where it starts.

14:26I'm a big fan of a related organization, the National Building Museum, which does... I loved it. I was just there last weekend. Yeah. Does a great deal of outreach to the public to get them to understand about building and subsequently architecture, too, to a certain extent. My husband is also an architect. And we were at the Building Museum last weekend. And there's a great exhibit, the Rosenwald School exhibit, and the Paul Rudolph Chapel at Tuskegee Institute exhibit. Yes, yes. But there's a room with a bunch of Legos and a bunch of kids playing with the Legos.

14:58And I thought, why isn't that in the lobby of the AIA headquarters? I know. You know, you want to engage people, right? But there's Architecture Week in April, where we're really trying to mobilize individuals and firms to engage with their local schools. You know, go home for Architecture Week. The other corollary that's so fascinating is a great majority of architects love what they do and love their profession. So there's this funny disconnect as if the passionate architects that love what they do aren't talking to the right elevation of their community, in a way.

15:34I think you have to go engage the community. Now, you mentioned earlier about having Legos in the lobby of your building.

The new AIA headquarters

15:41Your building is significant on its own and has recently been remodeled after a long process. I haven't seen it yet, but I understand it's gorgeous. I'd love to give you a tour. Yeah, and I would credit a much bigger team than I. I inherited a great design process. So I think I came my first day was the celebration of opening the doors. But it's a great adaptive reuse of a brutalist building designed by the Architects Collaborative, quite innovative and experimental in its day, but also a really beautiful site plan diagram where it kind of hugs and embraces the octagon, one of the first homes in Washington and the first office of the AIA in Washington.

16:22So it's almost like this history lesson in holding your history as a diagram. And then EHDD, a firm out of San Francisco, and Hartman & Cox, a firm in D.C., led the adaptive reuse. So there's a scrim that's been added kind of in front on steel columns that have solar collectors and also shade the 1970s facades. There's solar power on the roof. There's kind of a really interesting flip plan where the most public spaces are at the natural light and the beautiful window walls.

16:54And the offices and enclosed spaces are behind with, you know, borrowed lights or windows from the office. But a great majority of it is given over to member use and convening people and engaging them and having meetings and encouraging people who aren't architects to have engagement there. So really doing outreach to make it a welcoming building, my vision would be every eighth grader in America comes to visit. You know, eighth graders across the country visit Washington, D.C., either spring break or in the summer trip.

17:27But wouldn't it be cool if every eighth grader got to come to the AIA headquarters and play with Legos for a little while? Well, you are just steps from the White House, which you know they're going to walk by. Near the federal office building, you know, sort of near the ellipse. I mean, kind of a couple blocks between 17th and 18th. But also it's interesting because the octagon is 1700s. The original AIA headquarters by the Architects Collaborative is 1970. The renovation and adaptive reuse and healthy materials is, you know, 2025.

17:58So it's this interesting arc of how does the building change over time that I think young people would really appreciate learning and just being able to explore, you know, kind of being invited in. Now, I've seen a number of programs for AIA members at the building. What kind of public programming is there? There's different speakers, for sure, and there's different exhibits. There's a new exhibition gallery. There's a new cafe. There's a new architecture store. So you can buy interesting books about architecture. A lot of children's toys focused on building and design.

18:32Of course, AIA swag. So you can wear your AIA emblem on every T-shirt. Of course. You own. There's a large, a couple of large spaces to convene people for talks and workshops. And that programming is really just starting. Also inviting the local chapters in D.C., Virginia, and Maryland to think of our building as a building they can use, too. I would say we're in the beginning of what invitation looks like. So I'd love ideas from you. Sure. We can talk about that. Yeah. Bring the North Raleigh chapter to D.C.

19:03That's right. That's right. Now, with AIA and its advocacy, historically, anyway, the AIA has been the kind of group that mostly just writes a sternly worded letter on something that it objects to. Is that going to change in this current environment? Is it going to get more activists? I think what you've seen, even if you're paying attention to the comments for the Commission on the Fine Arts in Washington, the hearing, I think there were 30,000 comments from people across the country.

19:36And what we tried to do was really get out the word from our members and encourage them to comment, encourage them to speak up. I think, you know, a big organization writing sternly worded letters only goes so far. I think it really matters if voters and members of AIA and members of other important organizations speak up and show the volume of people that care about things. I feel like architects have been excellent advocates on climate. If you look back over the course of our careers, you know, from the 1970s, the kind of buildings we were building where we didn't really talk about how much energy they used,

20:11to a net zero building for the headquarters and the progress we've made on 2030 and energy codes and healthy materials, I think that's been a pretty exciting change. But it gets kind of technical kind of quickly. So I think explaining it in ways that, you know, an eighth grader can understand is really important. That is really a wonderful vision of having hordes of eighth graders come to the building to experience architecture. That would be just fantastic. Well, it's a circle.

20:42So this came up at a meeting we were having with alliance organizations. We were ideating with some crazy things we could do right away. And then I was flying home to Massachusetts this weekend to see my children. And there were like 600 students, middle school students, wearing Washington t-shirts at the airport, at National Airport. And I was like, they're right here. Yeah. So I'll work on that. I'll work on figuring out how to make that invitation. Oh, that's great.

Basketball history and architecture

21:09Now, I saw in your bio that your dad was a professional basketball player. Who did he play for? He played for three different teams. He started off in Syracuse at the Syracuse Nationals. He was a New Yorker. Grew up in Brooklyn. Went to college at Fordham. Played basketball at Fordham. People really wouldn't remember that Syracuse, New York had a professional basketball team. But they are the Nationals. And then he went on to the Detroit Pistons. And then he played for Philadelphia. 76ers is probably the most interesting story.

21:41He played in the game when Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points. Oh, wow. He was a team member. And it was played in Pennsylvania. And it was on the radio, but it was not on television. Huh. It was not on TV, really? Yeah. It was on the radio. Isn't that crazy? What year was that about? Well, he played between 55 and 63. Okay. Around 60, I want to say. Yeah. 60-ish. But interestingly, he traveled widely with the U.S. basketball team in an era where a lot of the professionals would travel with that team in the summer to stay in shape.

22:15Okay. And so he traveled all over the world. And so I think a lot of my architectural interest comes from him noticing architecture and museums and art and, you know, kind of encouraging his children to get out and about and go see the world. And I also grew up in an interesting town in New Jersey that has an incredible wide variety of architecture. But this one particular building I liked the most was sort of like the Barbie, modernist Barbie house. Which one was that? It was a house on Upper Mountain Avenue in Montclair.

22:46And a friend who also turned into an architect as she grew up. Her parents lived there. And they had Marcel Breuer chairs. And we just thought they were the coolest people in the neighborhood. I'm going to look this up just a second. Because there's this guy from New Jersey that I'm sure that you've run across. I want to say it starts with a B. Let me look at the B's.

23:13Bowser. Ed Bowser. Bowser. Nutley. Essex Fells. And West Orange. Oh, here we go. 45 High Street. Montclair. I'm texting this woman to see if she remembers who designed her parents' house. Yeah. Yes, Bowser was a really interesting black architect who practiced in the 70s and 80s. The state would not test him for an architectural license because he was black. So he took the national exam and got the top grade in the country.

23:46And after that, New Jersey relented and he established his own business. I love that. Yeah. It's a great story on Edward Bowser.

Licensing, education, and technology

23:54That's a great story. One of the questions I wanted to ask you, there's a whole series of administrative hoops people have to do to go to school for architecture, get a license for architecture, get license in other localities for architecture. I was talking with someone recently with the NCARB, which is the Association of Registration Boards. And they were talking about moving to a competency kind of system in the future that's a little different from how it is now.

24:25Can you explain that for me? I can explain a little bit and then refer you to the people that really know where it came from. Actually, we just had an alliance meeting with NCARB and NAB and NCAB and NOMA, AIA, a couple other groups actually last week at AIA sponsored by NOMA. So these groups that touch architecture in kind of different places or times in a career have had a relationship for a long time and co-wrote a letter to the Department of Education around the student loan cap ruling that came out that was open for comment.

24:59I don't know how much you know about that. Oh, yes. This is where they wanted to recategorize architecture as not a professional field. The proposal, basically it's a short version, in the BBB bill, there was a budget line item to reduce the budget for student loans. So then when it went to the Department of Education, their way of doing that was to write this ruling that would put caps on certain disciplines and how much money they could borrow for their education. And so we co-wrote a letter. I'm happy to get you a copy of it.

25:29Basically, you know, they took nursing, mental health professionals, engineers, accountants, architects, and put a kind of artificial limit on their education and called them no longer classified as professional education for the Department of Education loan limit. So who's left? Is it just doctors and lawyers? Yeah, pretty much. So it's so sad because the media picked it up as if it had something to actually do with the profession as opposed to the student loan amount you could borrow.

25:59Okay. And then it also doesn't understand architecture, that there are many states where there's no bachelor of architecture anymore. There's only a master's. So in certain states, I think there's 20 plus states where you could only take a master's degree to become an architect in that state. So it's a very narrow, uninformed perspective that we wrote, I thought, a really great letter. And we'll continue to advocate, you know, back to that sternly worded letter that does matter in the process of, you know, commenting on policy and sort of how federal agencies work.

26:31But then I think it's also incumbent upon us to explain it and educate students and architects and others about what it's really about and a better description of what the profession of architecture actually is and how important it is for people to understand that. And, you know, that it's a rigorous licensing process. I think the goal of NCARB is to make architecture a bit more accessible. And I've been around long enough that in Massachusetts, there were alternative ways to qualify to take the exam.

27:02You didn't need an accredited degree. That change happened, I think, in the 80s or the early 90s. Yeah, you used to be able to self-educate, right? There was a guy here in North Carolina who basically self-read for his license. He trained himself. Yeah. He was one of the last ones in the 80s. Didn't Abraham Lincoln train himself to be a lawyer? Exactly.

27:24So at Chepley-Bulfinch, when I joined the firm, there were many people, mostly men who had been in World War II, who had learned building and design as part of their service, either in the Army or the Marines. And they helped build campuses and military bases. And they came back and, you know, were older and got married and had kids. And they didn't really have time to go to school. So there were many states that you could apprentice into architecture. It took longer, and you still needed to pass the same exams.

27:55And so I think what NCARB is trying to do is really open-minded about the future and encouraging more people to participate in our profession. I think the era of making it exclusive has made it more difficult to encourage a wide variety of people to participate and kind of narrows the population of architects as opposed to expanding people who see it as a vibrant career. It's really interesting now with the technology that, you know, to be an architect is no longer necessarily to be geographically tied to anything.

28:29And you can be a project in Ohio where the architect is from Belgium. And that's happening all over the place. I see that even with some of our local firms who are having projects very far away. They may only visit two or three times. I think it's interesting, too, that, you know, we're much more of a global design community. What you can find online is sort of limitless. You can be inspired by all sorts of different architects. I feel like we've had a long tradition of inviting people from around the world to design and build in the U.S., but usually it was in collaboration with local firms.

29:03And I think, you know, certainly my early days, it was before firms started to expand and buy up the great small locals. And so Shepley would have like a relationship with a local firm who really knew the politics of the locality and knew a little bit more about, you know, the engineers that have worked on that or landscape architects that have worked on that campus before. But I still think it's really important for regardless of where you're from, to spend the time understanding the context in the community and engaging the community. I don't think you always have to be from somewhere to understand how to contribute to the community.

29:39And I think a lot of it is a transition, certainly in my career, of architecture towards expertise. Have you done a hospital before? Have you done a library before? You know, I worked on libraries for a long, long time. And clients would hire us because we'd worked on so many. We had more ideas about how they could change than people who had never worked on them before. So I think it's a blend, right? You know, I always thought most architects want to be generalists. Yes. And think they can design anything and they probably can, right? But I think some buildings have gotten pretty technical and having done it before or building on the experience of others is a good thing.

30:16But then I also have worked with clients who really wanted a completely different viewpoint to be relevant. So I worked on a project at Smith College with Maya Lin. Our firm and her firm collaborated. Basically, she was the lead and then we were the architect of record. And she was asked by Novartis to design a new lab building because they wanted someone who had never done it before. Like with someone who was creative and brought very different ideas, create a different kind of building that might unlock innovation.

30:47And so I think it's that tension between this is the way we've always done it and it works pretty well, but maybe it's not innovative enough or doesn't break out of its kind of historic approach. So that's why I love design, because you can talk about that, right? And if you're under 40, Google Maya Lin. She was the designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., one of the most beautiful memorials, I think, in the world. She was a graduate student at Yale, so she's a very young person.

31:18But go visit her library at Smith College. Go visit her Novartis building in Cambridge, right next to the MIT campus. Her art is remarkable and her architecture is remarkable. So that's where inviting a creative person like Maya Lin to look at a problem in a different way, I think, makes sense. Not for every project, maybe, but there are times where I think that approach really gives you something different. Now, I know you get asked all the time about the impact of AI on architectural practices.

31:50I want to ask you a different question. And the different question is, how is AIA, as a professional association, using AI right now to administer its members? Well, I would say we're experimenting. You know, we're looking at, I mean, probably the thing I say most is when someone says, well, I have a 40-page report on that. Like, you could probably use AI to summarize it. But, you know, there's too much information in the world coming at you from every direction. What we're trying to do is learn as fast as we can, both internal to AIA and with our members.

32:22And so we're talking to firms, large and small, that are experimenting. We're talking to the companies creating the technologies. I think it's like most things that are in kind of rapid shift. If you're not leaning in and participating and learning about it, you probably will be left behind because people will know more about it than you do. So it kind of reminds me of my mother who didn't want to change from a flip phone to an iPhone. And then for the next 10 years said, what are you doing on your phone? I was like, what do you mean? I have like 45 different apps on my phone.

32:54So I think AI, I would love it to make us more profitable, more effective, take some of the stressful, tedious work and make it easier. And I think humans make errors, especially when they're doing tedious work. If AI can check that work for you, all of a sudden, you know, maybe your liability insurance goes down because you've actually checked your work in a different way and you, you know, catch more errors to the door schedule. You know, I always felt like shop drawings is not my happy place.

33:25So any tool that would help me do that a little more effectively could be great. But I also think it's scary when people think machines can take over the world. And I really believe that human creativity in the middle. And I love this man I worked with for many years said, keep the human in the loop. Right. One of the applications that I found AI useful for is when I want to attend a conference. I will tell Claude, which is the one I use, I will tell Claude something about me. I'll have it research me.

33:56Then I'll have it research all the speakers that are in the schedule and ask it to make recommendations on what I should go listen to. And it's been spot on so far. Oh, great. And then to be a contrarian, I would like, from a serendipity point of view, I'd ask Claude, what is the absolute worst session for me to go to? Yes, that's a good question. I don't think there's serendipity in AI, right? And so I have a friend who used to say, I love to read widely.

34:29So I pick up magazines people have left on the chairs in the airport just because I would never buy that magazine. But I'm fascinated about getting alternative perspectives. Yes. Okay. You know, so I think like there's words that are really important to me, like serendipity, that doesn't feel like AI does that. But I had a colleague tell a story of, you know, she said, we've talked, engaged this community. We had 47 user group meetings. I volunteered to synthesize it all. And then I thought, oh, my God, AI could help me.

35:00And did it in a couple of hours instead of an entire weekend. So I think it has sensible use. I mean, I think people are good to be skeptical and challenge it. But I really do think it would be better for architects to use it for the boring, tedious, high-risk task than the creative. Right. Well, maybe you can ask it how to get all those eighth graders into the building. Yeah, I think I could. Who signs them up? Please find me the travel authority that signs up these eighth-grade trips. I'm sure it could help me.

35:31Yeah. Carol, this has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for talking with me. Oh, George, such a pleasure. And please come visit. And if I get to Raleigh anytime soon, I will come see you. Okay. George was speaking with Carol Wedge of the AIA.

Julia Jamrozik and Corin Kempster

35:46Julia Jamrozik and Corin Kempster both trained at the University of Toronto. Go Varsity Blues! And both landed at Herzog & de Meuron in Basel, Switzerland. They have been collaborating since 2003, making all sorts of creative play spaces, from a semicircular swing set in Buffalo to a large-scale set of PVC water pipes in Denver. Their book, Growing Up Modern, Childhoods and Iconic Modernist Homes, came out of a summer they spent driving a camper van across Europe with a nine-month-old in tow,

36:20interviewing people who grew up in buildings designed by architecture's greatest. Here is George's conversation with Julia Jamrozik and Corin Kempster. Julia and Corin, let's just start off with the basic question. How did you guys meet? We both met at the University of Toronto when we were undergraduate students studying art and architecture. Well, we were a part of a large group of friends that was doing various kind of projects as part of school, but also extracurricular projects.

36:51So we did a number of installations with a group of friends, and then we started to do work together. And at the same time, we became a couple. I skipped a few years in between there, perhaps, but I think that's the short story. So we started actually working on video art projects together and started to collaborate in different ways. And was this a love at first sight thing, or did you have to really kind of figure it out first? Each other?

37:21Yes. It was love at first sight for me, but Julia took some more convincing.

37:28There's always a little bit difference in speed between one side of the couple and the other, I've discovered. You're being generous. I don't think that was quite as simple as that either. All right. So how many years have you been together now? I think 25. Awesome. What was your first project together that you really felt was just the two of you? Your first big successful project together? As Julia mentioned, we collaborated on some video artworks pretty early on in our relationship.

38:01And then we had those exhibited. And so that felt like a really good project and a great start. Tell me about that exhibition. It was at VTape in Toronto, which is an art space dedicated to video art. And it was a series of explorations of the city around us and then of our bodies as a kind of site of investigation. Okay, cool. Now, I came across you guys from a book published in 2021 called Growing Up Modern.

Growing up in iconic modern homes

38:34We've had a feature on the show for years called Children of Genius, where we interview the children of famous architects who almost always grew up in modernist houses. Your book focused in on four particular houses. Which ones were they? We looked at four examples of very early modernist houses and housing. And so we looked at the Tugendhat Villa in Brno, the Schmincke House in Le Bau in Germany, the row houses of the Weissenhof Siedlung, and the Unitae in Marseille.

39:10And those were designed by Mies van der Rohe and Hans Schroon and J.J.P. Auld and Le Corbusier, respectively. Okay. Now, how did you find the people that grew up in these houses? So what we wanted to do is we wanted to record the stories of people who were the very first children to grow up in modernist houses and modernist housing. And it was really important that they were the children. So they weren't the kind of parents who were commissioning this kind of architecture.

39:44And it was also important that they were the very first. So it wasn't a kind of a situation of someone who was a child there, you know, 10 years ago. Because it was important for us to kind of try to gather as much as possible the first impressions of what those places were like. And so it was a little bit of a process trying to understand which houses or housing projects would have had kids living in them. And obviously, once we were able to narrow that down, then which of those people were still alive and then who is actually going to be willing to talk to us.

40:21So the process was a little bit involved and started quite broadly, just trying to think about, you know, which were the most prominent examples of early modernism that we had learned about in university, starting with the buildings themselves. And then thinking about, okay, who were the architects that we wanted to represent as part of the project? And eventually that led us, you know, from a process of actually just trying to, you know, look through histories of different buildings, looking for some hint of a child being present through various forms of archival, you know, research, looking mostly at obituaries and written kind of documents pertaining to the people who live in modernist architecture,

41:04which isn't always very well recorded. So independent research, which then led to contacting a number of organizations, which ended up being quite helpful to us. So the Le Corbusier Foundation in Paris or the Weissenhoff Siedlung, which also has a museum associated on the site and curatorial staff there as well. So those organizations were tremendously helpful to us, but it's not where we started in terms of trying to find these individuals. The search was sort of further constrained by it was important to us that not only could we contact the child who grew up in the house and was part of the first family to inhabit whatever the home was, but the home had to still exist.

41:47So we did end up speaking with a number of people who had grown up in remarkable structures, but then the structures being destroyed. And so it was important to us that we could visit the home that they grew up in today and then photograph it from their point of view. So in the kind of Venn diagram of all of our constraints, we only found four individuals who kind of met all of the criteria we had set out for ourselves. That's still pretty good, I think. There was also the further factor that we were trying to think about how to do this research and in the kind of logistical way, trying to get our way from interview to the former residents, right?

42:27And so we had actually found some individuals in Scandinavian countries who might have been really interesting to interview, but there was the kind of logistical aspect of our own travel. And therefore, we weren't able to talk to them in the end. We were trying to cover, again, a number of bases and a number of different types, different typologies of houses and housing, so that we weren't only speaking to, you know, people who had grown up in villas, but rather trying to kind of show a slightly broader range.

43:00Well, tell me about some of these children. So we ended up having further conversations, but we only included four stories in the book. And basically, those had to do with the kind of perfect combination of they were able to talk to us, we were able to go to the house, and therefore, their story from the kind of constraints we set for ourselves was complete. I'll start with Mrs. Zumpfe, who grew up in the Schmincke house. So this is Helga Zumpfe, the youngest daughter of the Schmincke family. And so she grew up in the Hans Schroon-designed house in Le Bau.

43:34So this is one of the villas that we portray in the book. And she's a fascinating character, because I think she really kind of fell in love with the house. And she is extremely fond of it. I think what's notable is that the family developed a very strong relationship with the architect. He not only, you know, visited them many, many times in the construction of in the planning of the house, but also became a kind of a lifelong friend of the family. And so she has lots of memories of the house, but also of him.

44:05And there's also lots of documentation of Schroon playing with the children in the pond or other kind of touching photographs of them eating breakfast together at the dining table and things like this. And so it's a very well-documented childhood, but also a very well-documented relationship that she has with the house and a house that she lived in for a very long time. She was 18 when she left. And so she has quite strong and vivid memories of it. And when we spoke to her, we did the interviews in 2015.

44:40She hadn't lived there for decades, but she still said that she dreams about the house. And she, you know, she very vividly recalls many things that happened there. Did you get to walk around it with her at all? No. So when we met her in her apartment, she now lives in the north of Germany, whereas the house itself is in the east side of Germany. So we weren't able to be in the same space with her. There was a slight chance that she might come for the exhibition, which we did two years ago or last year in the house.

45:14But she was unable to travel at that point. So already by the time we had all of our conversations, the people we spoke with were quite old. But since those conversations, two of them had passed away already. And so part of the impetus for the project was to also record these stories that otherwise might go unrecorded or might only be recorded in the kind of personal archives. And for us, the idea was to make them more publicly available as a resource and as a way of understanding these buildings and this moment in architecture.

45:51When I have interviewed children of famous architects who grew up in their parents' house, usually modernist, they tell me that they were advanced to adulthood a little early. They were expected to talk about more high-minded conversations at dinner generally. Politics, religion, culture, art, all of that would come up in these households. Did you find that in your examples at all? I don't think so specifically, but I also, I don't think we asked questions that would maybe reveal that.

46:26So that wasn't part of it. One thing I did want to say is we did have the great fortune to interview Ralph Fassbender, who grew up in one of the out row houses in the Waisenhoff Siedlung. And we got to interview him inside one of the row houses. And it was actually the one next door to the one he grew up in. But we were lucky. They're still rented out and lived in to this day. But one of them was vacant between tenants awaiting some repairs. And the Waisenhoff Museum organized that we could meet with Ralph on site.

46:58And because it was identical to the house he grew up in, he walked us around the house, pointed out all of the stories that he told us. He was able to show us where they all happened. And then we could walk around the neighborhood. And he showed us where they would, like, break into the Mies van der Rohe building and set off firecrackers in the stairwells. And the streetlight that he shot at with his BB gun and then, you know, had to kind of evade responsibility for and all sorts of pranks that any young kid would get up to. They brought everything to life.

47:29That must have been a blast for all of you.

47:33Absolutely was. I mean, it was interesting to see how being in the space kind of was a prompt for telling those stories. But likewise, Mr. Fassbender brought with him his photo albums. And so that was another prompt in the conversation, which looking at the photo albums, he was, you know, recalled different stories and was able to tell us about different aspects of his childhood there. So both of those were really great prompts. Another really interesting example was Giselle Moreau, who we were able to interview in the apartment that she grew up in because she basically spent her entire life living in the unité de habitation en Marseille.

48:11And when her parents passed away, they left her the apartment, her childhood apartment. And so after living in numerous units throughout the building, she actually has found herself in retirement living back where she started, where she grew up. Oh, isn't that cool? Yeah, it's amazing. And she was able to tell us lots about the building, and she has very strong and very fond memories. And interestingly, her memories of childhood are also tied up with her memories of her own motherhood, of her children, and those children growing up in the apartment, and then now her grandchildren who come to visit.

48:44So she's led a very full and rich life. With the exception of a short time when she was studying, she has lived her whole life in that building and couldn't say enough good about it. That sounds like the plot of a nice movie. There's even a love twist at the end. Did you find any downsides of growing up modern? Like any disadvantages of being a kid in a modernist house? I think our interview with Ernst Tugendhat, who grew up in Mies van der Rohe's Tugendhat villa in Bruneau, he spoke the most to that and essentially just did not remember the house fondly in any way.

49:28And at one point sort of even said if, you know, they were forced to leave in World War II, like many people. But he sort of made the claim that if that hadn't happened, he'd have left anyway. He didn't have any particular love for the house. What did he not enjoy about it? I think what we gathered was basically at that time, Bruneau was a very provincial city and the house was a very extravagant, extremely visible display of wealth.

50:00And it attracted a lot of attention. And I think he felt very uncomfortable with that. With all that attention. But I think there was also a kind of ambivalence towards the house. So it wasn't necessarily that he hated it. It was more that he didn't see value in it. Okay. And so I think the family has a very complicated relationship to the house because they were forced to flee as the Nazis were coming. So it wasn't a voluntary departure.

50:31Sure. And I think as a result, the kind of relationship the family has to the house is tied in with many, many more difficult stories and histories that they have personally to it. But also he knows that the house is important to many people in his family. So, for example, his sister is an art historian and she has spent a fair amount of time and trouble working on the renovation and rehabilitation of the house and getting it to, you know, very pristine conditions that it is in currently.

51:05But she never lived in the house. She was born after the family had been forced to leave. And so at the time, he was the remaining member of the family who had actually lived there, even though he didn't remember it very much. She was seven when they left. And so that kind of ambivalence is also tied, I think, to many other layers of priorities, understanding histories. It's a little bit more complicated than just he didn't like the house. Sure. Well, let's move forward in time. You all are designers and artists, and you make these great installations that encourage interaction with people.

Public art installations and play spaces

51:42Tell me about one of your recent ones. Where to start? Where to start? The thing that comes first to my mind is one that you mentioned, Pipelines, which is, I think, an artwork that we're very proud of, was commissioned by the Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum in Denver as part of the Biennale of the Americas. And it was unusual in that they, the museum, approached us and asked us to design an installation.

52:12So it wasn't a competition. We didn't have to come up with the design to win the commission. And that actually gave us the leisure of really delving in quite deep and doing a lot of research and letting the kind of installation evolve. The installation took place next to the regional headquarters for the Environmental Protection Agency. And we knew that at that time, Colorado had been in a sustained drought for many years. At the same time, Denver was digging up a lot of their streets, like many American cities, replacing their lead water pipe infrastructure.

52:43And so we wanted to deal with the infrastructure of water as a way to talk about resource use, resource extraction and renewal. We were then able to partner with a local factory that makes PVC pipes for water, the very pipes that they were using to replace the lead ones. And instead of these pipes, which are surprisingly colorful, getting buried and hidden underground, we worked with them above ground in a kind of three-dimensional lattice-like drawing that people could inhabit and play on and experience as a social infrastructure.

53:16But that it would then speak to kind of these deeper issues that were affecting the people in that city. Well, let's pretend I'm 10 years old and I'm walking up to this thing. I have no concept of social infrastructure. What am I going to experience walking up to it? You're the perfect person because kids never need any explanation. They see a fun, colorful thing and they just go for it. And they experience it the way that they want to. So we saw kids yelling into the pipes and listening at the other end.

53:47We saw kids bouncing on them, dancing on them, jumping, sitting. They had more fun than the adults, for sure. And I think that's a common theme in our work. We very consciously design for children and invite them into our work. And we have, we deal with a lot of adult themes and narratives, but it's not important for anyone to understand those to enjoy the artwork. It's just like another layer for somebody else who might enjoy that aspect of it more than, you know, the ability to do parkour or the technique on the installation itself.

54:24So as designers and artists and parents, do you like beta test these things on your own kids? Our son is our strongest critic. He's very hard to please. We don't exactly test things on him, although we do make him go to all of our projects. And I think as he's been getting older, I think we've enjoyed kind of discussing them with him and kind of allowing him an in on the process as well, not just a play opportunity at the end of it.

54:55And so that's been fun to see and hear what what he has to say or how he thinks about it as we present the ideas to him as they develop. What's been the best feedback he's given you on a project? He was impressed with something recently, and I'm trying to remember which one it was, but I was so surprised that he liked it because, as Julia said, he's a tough critic. Like, we set up these two, we rented these two enormous orange bleachers like you would get at a sporting event. Yeah. But we just set them up directly across from one another so that the audience on the other side would be the performer and the viewers would become the artwork.

55:34And I remember when we took him to that, he was very surprised at how big it was. And I think he was a little bit impressed just at the scale, because he'd probably seen us drawing it and making models of it, but maybe the real thing was bigger than he expected. But I guess that's not quite the same as him appreciating the artwork itself. That's close. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Now, what have the two of you got cooked up for the second half of 26? We're working on a number of both temporary and permanent public artworks and installations.

56:04So I think that's keeping us quite busy. We're also going to be going to the Grantham Foundation in Quebec to do a residency, which I'm quite looking forward to. So it's going to be a three-week residency project in a gallery slash house designed by Pierre Thibault in Quebec. So that should be a nice kind of working retreat. Let's call it that. But there's always a lot of things on the go and lots to look forward to. Where can people find out more about your projects?

56:35Do you have a website? We do. Our website is www.ck-jj.com for Corin Kempster, Julia Jan Rosick. There you can see the different categories of our work. The expanded preservation, where you would find growing up modern and similar projects that deal with conservation. And social infrastructures, which covers more of our art installations and trying to get strangers together and interact with one another. Well, this has been Grantham. Thank you so much for talking with me.

57:06Thank you. That was Julia Jan Rosick and Corin Kempster. The Frank House in Pittsburgh was designed by Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. Our guest, Darcy Frank McKay, grew up in that famous house, and with the passing of her father, Alan, she's a steward for the home's preservation and sustainability. George began his conversation with Darcy by going way back into her past.

Darcy Frank McKay and the Frank House

57:31Darcy, our ACE research team looked into your criminal record and understood that you spent a lot of time in detention in elementary school. Is that true? George, you have a crack team, that's for sure. I'm not sure I was in detention in elementary school, but I know I spent a lot of time in detention in high school, and I was known for uniform infractions. Ah. And in particular, we were not allowed to wear tennis shoes or athletic shoes with our tunics, and I thought that was kind of a dumb idea.

58:03So occasionally, after gym, I would keep my tennis shoes on, and I became well-acquainted with the head of school after a while. Was that the most blatant violation that you did? That's the most blatant one that I'll confess to. Okay. Yes. That's about it. Good, clean fun. And since then, you've gone on to a great career in real estate, I understand, and you got to grow up in this house. Yeah, I spent a couple of decades managing some very large global businesses for a global real estate firm.

58:36I was not in the transaction end of it. I was more in the portfolio strategy, but I oversaw a lot of teams who operated large sections of real estate for tech companies and pharma, banks, that kind of thing. And then I went on to tech, and then, believe it or not, about a year ago, I rewired, I've been told I was not allowed to say retired, and have had this project preserving and unveiling the Frank House sort of in my lap since then, since our father passed away a couple of years ago.

59:08Well, let's rewind the clock to your grandparents. So how did they come across Gropius and Breuer and commission this house? That's a great question. You know, I didn't grow up knowing these answers, and it's only recently, as we have unearthed a treasure trove of archives, including 7,500 pages of correspondence between my grandparents, Robert and Cecilia Frank, and the two architects, Gropius and Breuer, and their collaborators, that I have begun to understand a little bit of the story.

59:41I can't say I have read through all 7,500 pages yet, although I think some historians like Barry Bergdahl have. But what I did come across is some references to Gropius speaking at what was then called the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1938, which is now known as Carnegie Mellon University, or CMU. He and Breuer were both working on the Pennsylvania Pavilion for the World's Fair in 1938. And so they, you know, had arrived in Cambridge from Europe and had headquartered their teaching and their business there.

1:00:17And so they were commuting back and forth to Pittsburgh to work on the Pennsylvania Commission or Pennsylvania Pavilion, rather. So it's not clear to me whether or not Robert knew of them and then attended the lecture, or he was curious and saw the lecture first and then got the idea to commission this new home for Cecilia and Robert and, at the time, their three children, young children in Pittsburgh. The challenge that they made to the architects was to design a home that would be a bit of a, you know, bucolic enclave for their children to be raised in the middle of Pittsburgh at a time when, obviously, the industrial air caused a lot of troubles for being outside, and to design a house that was built for entertaining, because they absolutely loved to entertain.

1:01:08And so that's what happened. They designed this total work of art that included the architecture, the landscape, the fabrics, the finishes, the lighting, down to the electrical switch plates, which are engraved in this gorgeous Bauhaus type. Every little detail, every piece of furniture was designed by Breuer and Gropius for this house. So it really was a very collaborative effort. Now, what industry were your grandparents in?

1:01:39My grandfather, Robert, along with his father, were industrialists in Pittsburgh. Robert was an executive at Copper Weld Steel, which created a new product that merged copper and steel and was used throughout industrial America, including the transmission of electricity, you know, high voltage electricity through the lines. Robert was an engineer by training, and so he left a very heavy mark on the house.

1:02:10He was deeply interested in not just the things that you would normally think of when you're commissioning a house, like the program of bedrooms and space and all of that, but he was deeply interested in the efficiency of systems. And my grandmother was a big philanthropist. She was very involved in music and in medical research. So she was actively involved in the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Civic Light Opera, the Youth Symphony of many clippings of her with the, you know, horn players and the cast of various theater productions in the house.

1:02:49In fact, I grew up with a fabulous, probably three foot tall poster of hair on the bar that was framed. And hair had debuted on Broadway and then eventually made its way to Pittsburgh. And so there was the cast poster of hair, and she had invited the cast over on Christmas Day, figuring they would be lonely. And so the cast, in honor of her and her birthday, signed this poster at the bottom, and it sat framed in our bar growing up.

1:03:21So she was a big patron of the arts and heavily involved in a lot of that, in addition to medical research, cancer research. And later in her life, I discovered, as I opened a drawer the other day in her dressing room, a trove of photos that showed her speaking at the opening of a new medical center for the University of Pittsburgh. Oh, okay. She was involved in a new gastroenterology center there, and they were very involved in making sure that Pittsburgh was a center of not just the arts and culture, but also of the intellectuals of the time.

1:03:57So, for example, I remember stories about her hosting Jonas Salk when he was visiting the University of Pittsburgh and looking to see whether he might move to Pittsburgh. And, of course, he did decide to move to Pittsburgh, and that's where he did his research on the polio vaccine, which is what we still use today. So this is a really substantial house. It is built for entertaining. It's built for having people overnight. It has a lot of features. You mentioned earlier about Robert being interested in the technology of this.

1:04:29What was the hot new thing when the house was built?

Innovative systems and early modern design

1:04:32Well, you're right. The house is pretty substantial. The enclosed space is about 12,000 square feet. It's got about eight bedrooms. Five of those were for family and guests, and then the rest were for staff. Thirteen bathrooms. The hot new thing, I mean, as I mentioned, Robert was very interested in systems, and so there's lots of correspondence. He would dictate sometimes multiple 10-page letters a day to the architects, telling them what he wanted, his new ideas, his questions.

1:05:03The first version of the design of the flu, for example, the central flu in the house, he said was awkward and inefficient, and so he redesigned it for them. He was also very interested in heating and cooling. And so, for example, there's one letter that I uncovered from 1939 in which he put forward his latest brainstorm, in quotes, where he was advocating for radiator-style cooling and a reduction in water consumption, which I don't think anyone was talking about at the time.

1:05:34And specifically, he asked that the water from the compressor be passed through the swimming pool water circulating system to both cool down its temperature and pass the heat along to the pool water. Wow. So that was pretty ahead of its time, I think. The house also has a, there is a green roof. I don't think they called it a green roof, but over the garage. So the garage is literally built in under the grade of the backyard. It's part of the landscape.

1:06:05And in the correspondence with the architects, they refer to it as the roof garden effect. So that's another element of the house that I think was probably ahead of its time. My favorite story, though, is Robert was very concerned about the air quality, and there's a lot of gaseous dirt floating around in Pittsburgh in the 1930s. My father used to say he would take the bus to school and have to change his white shirt because it would become black with all the soot in the air. And so Robert was doing a lot of research to figure out the best air filtration technology, and he couldn't really find much on the residential market.

1:06:46So he found some engineers in New York that were adapting the latest technology, filtration technology, for industrial and military purposes, and specifically for gas masks. So he said, look, I've spent five hours with these engineers. This is the filtration technology. We need to adapt it from industrial and military use into a residential setting. So his fingerprints are all over this. That is really ahead of its time. I can't imagine anybody else was doing quite that level of research and innovation at that time.

1:07:22I also think, you know, people smoked a lot inside. I don't think my grandparents smoked as much. But when you look at the fabulous furniture, if you look at the books or the website, you can see that many of the chases were designed with these beautiful flaps that would come up to put your drink and your cigarette or your cigar. So he was not only thinking about filtering out the gaseous particles from outside, but also when they would host parties and people would smoke cigars or pipes or cigarettes, how you keep that filtering out of the air.

1:07:53Your house is so unique. Was it a magnet for kids in the neighborhood? Oh, it was. Over many, many generations, especially the swimming pool. There's a wet bar on every floor and there's an indoor swimming pool. At one end, there are these very large sliding glass doors that allow the deep end of the pool to be opened to the outdoors, which is a nice thing to have in Pittsburgh, especially in the summertime.

1:08:24And, of course, everybody loves to swim. I have also uncovered a trove of about 50 home movies, including one of my dad's 17th birthday. He was born in March, so it was quite cold. But the footage includes all of these fabulous, completely done up, coiffed kids arriving in their pearls and furs and dresses and tuxedos. And then, of course, at the end of the party, they all end up in the pool in some fabulous bathing costumes.

1:08:57My sister and I love to host our birthday parties and in the pool as well. And so the pool was definitely a fun highlight for everyone in the neighborhood. Those must have been some fun parties. They were. And I'll tell you a secret. It's even fun to be in the pool without water. And it turns out it's possible to play all kinds of fun games on those little tiny square tiles on the bottom of the pool, even when the water is drained. Now, how long were your grandparents in the house? The house was continuously occupied by family up until my dad's passing about two and a half years ago.

1:09:32So my grandmother lived in the house, you know, from the moment it was occupied. They designed and commissioned the house in 1939, and they moved in in the fall of 1940. Fun fact, it took about 18 months to design, plan, build, and furnish this house, which is pretty remarkable in this day and age. I think we've gone in the inverse direction. Yes. And remember, all of this was done via Telegram and U.S. Postal Service, right?

1:10:04No computers, very few telephone calls, and then some in-person meetings in New York and Cambridge and Pittsburgh. They moved in in 1940, and my grandmother lived in the house until she passed away in 1971. And then your dad moved in, or was he somewhere else at the time? I would say he pretty much lived his whole life in that house. He did move away to go to college and then graduate school and get married and all of that. But he came back and then spent, you know, the last number of many, many decades in the house and also, you know, worked to restore and preserve it.

1:10:40He was the ultimate steward of that house. So now, as a third generation, what's on the punch list? What have you got to fix up now that you are assessing the house and its condition? Well, that's a great question. We're lucky the house was not designed by some other architects who shall go unnamed that end up with consummate engineering and water problems. So we've got a very strong steel and concrete fortress clad in stone. Dad was very focused on using the funds that he had to protect the envelope of the house.

1:11:16So the beautiful Kasota stone was refinished and repointed in a couple panels. I think he went back to the quarry in Minnesota to replace. He redid the roofs, the teak decking, the window pointing to make sure that the house would not have any water infiltration or things like that, particularly in the Pittsburgh climate. And so when we commissioned Gunny Harbo to do a condition assessment report about a year and a half ago, the report came back pretty positive with regard to the, you know, the core condition of the house.

1:11:52The main things that need to be redone are the, all of the systems. So you can imagine the electrical and the wiring and things like that are everything in the house is from 1940. And so that is the bulk of the work to upgrade those systems. And then the part of the house that has, I think, suffered the most has been the fabrics and the finishes that have been exposed to excess wear and tear, like the carpets and also UV exposure, which is incredibly damaging.

1:12:24So the original silk drapes and Venetian blinds are still hanging. The original fabrics on the Breuer chairs throughout the house are still there. Some are in great condition and others are showing the wear from all of that UV. So those are the two areas that we need to focus on in terms of restoring the house and making it available to the public. It certainly is one of the great examples of mid-century modernism, the best example in Pittsburgh.

1:12:54Yes. And it's in this sort of interstitial period between the wars, you know, 1939, 1940, before we were drawn in to World War II. And it's a very unusual modernist home. It is not your sort of traditional rectangle. The rectangle has been sort of disintegrated in favor of freer, more organic shapes, more intimate spaces. You still have a horizontal roofline and some ribbon windows and things like that.

1:13:25But when you're inside the house, it is a series of curved interconnecting spaces. The walls are done in sycamore or pear wood or travertine marble. There's a wishbone core of the house that connects the first floor reception hall with the living room and the dining room that is travertine marble, curved travertine marble. So the surfaces in the house, the finishes, the form of the furniture and the chairs, the color palette is all very free and organic.

1:14:02The house was written up in 1941 in architectural, I think it was Architectural Forum. And it speaks to this new form as European modernism came to America and had to adapt to its new reality here in the U.S. And I think that's what makes the house very alive and interesting and, in fact, feels a lot like a home. Now, are there any protections on the house to keep it from being destroyed in the future?

Preserving the Frank House

1:14:35Not at the moment. There are no protections on the house. Our dad was not interested in that as long as he knew he controlled the house. There was nothing that was going to stand in the way of him preserving it. And he, as I mentioned, he was the ultimate preservationist and was exacting about making sure that he went to the root factory and source of the stone or the glass brick wherein things needed to be repaired. So, this conversation about what protections we put on it going forward is happening right now with our advisors and trustees.

1:15:12We are going to be putting forward an application for the determination of eligibility for the National Register. That seems to be a bit of a no-brainer, so to speak. Yeah, you got that. I think you got that covered. Yeah, so I think we'll talk about what protections make sense and at what point in the restoration going forward. But the house certainly is a global landmark and deserves to stand proud over time. And it's in a neighborhood with some other notable houses.

1:15:43There's a Richard Meyer house in the neighborhood. There was a Venturi house that's gone now in the neighborhood. Are there any other modernist houses along that way? Those are the highlights, the two that you've captured there. And as we know, modernist houses are under threat and being torn down globally and in the United States. I think there are the meccas for modernist architecture in Florida and in Southern California. And it's growing in the rest of the country, as you well know.

1:16:15But I think these are really important, not just historical artifacts, but things when you look at the level of design intentionality and how people wanted to live and the idea of designing and making objects that will last a century. They have a lot to tell us about how to live in the future. If people want to support your foundation, where can they get more information? The history of the house, along with ways you can support us, are on our website, which is thefrankhouse.org.

1:16:45And there's also a link to a book, a beautiful book that Rizzoli published, that you can click on and find. Right now, we're building our basic infrastructure of the house. We hired our first part-time employee last year, who's helping us do some fundraising. And we are moving forward to hopefully get some capacity to do some volunteer management. We've had a lot of people raise their hands to help us. We don't have a big social media presence. We're on LinkedIn.

1:17:17But we need to start up an Instagram account and get out these gorgeous visuals and updates on what we're doing in the house. So that's all part of the foundation building that we're trying to do in 2026. Well, thank you so much for taking this on. I know not every family or family member would want to take on a house, and as important as this, and carry it into the future. So your service is much appreciated. Well, thank you, George. I think it's a labor of love. And the more I learn about my grandmother and my grandfather and the architects and their collaborators,

1:17:52who, by the way, Annie Albers was involved in the project, and Florence Knoll designed the kids' bedrooms, and Elliot Noyes. There were a number of really interesting collaborators on this project, but it really brings it to life. And I think there's a lot for people to enjoy and be inspired by as we reveal this to the world. Thank you, Darcy. Thank you, George. It's a pleasure. Thanks for listening. U.S. Modernist Radio is underwritten by the Brent R. Harris Charitable Trust,

1:18:24restorer 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, ifejonesconservancy.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,

1:18:54and 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 with 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 non-profit educational archive for the documentation, preservation, and promotion of modernist residential design.

1:19:25I'm Tom Guild. George and I will be back soon with another all-ages edition of U.S. Modernist Radio. Unfl cartridges in Raleigh, North Carolina. 転