#467/Anne Fougeron + Laurinda Spear + Musical Guest Aviana Gedler

Welcome to U.S. Modernist Radio

0:00Hi, I am Paul Bruder, 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

0:32and controversial buildings in the world. I'm Tom Geild. On today's episode, architect Anne Fugeron spent 30 years proving that architecture can be both beautiful and socially responsible, and the New York Times named her Suspension House, one of the 13 best modern homes in the world. Then, Lorenda Speer co-founded Architectonica in the 600-square-foot studio in Coconut Grove and changed the face of Miami's architecture. And at 22 years old, our musical guest, Aviana

1:07Gedler, has already won numerous awards and released a debut album. And now, your host, with zero albums, Mr. Modernism, George Smart. Thanks, Tom. There comes a moment in some people's lives where they think, but what if I also sang? The patron saint of this phenomenon is, of course, William Shatner, who in 1968 gave the world The Transform Man, an album on which he, well, interrogates the lyrics of Lucy in the Sky with

1:42Diamonds. He doesn't hit the notes. He kidnaps them. He corners Mr. Tambourine Man in a dramatic monologue and refuses to let it leave until it admits several felonies. It is less a record and more a hostage situation set to 8-track. And here's the kicker. Decades later, this kind of thing has become Shatner's brand of kitsch. The man has leaned so far into not singing, he made it an art form. Star Trek co-star Leonard Nimoy committed fully and sincerely later to songs like The Ballad of

2:17Bilbo Baggins, a tune that you can see on video about a hobbit accompanied by go-go dancers on YouTube. Really? Nimoy sings about Bilbo with the earnest dignity of a man who believes he is doing Tolkien some kind of favor, while women in mod dresses twirl around him for reasons no historian has ever explained. But wait, there's more. Bruce Willis decided the world needed to hear him cover blues standards in 1986 with the album The Return of Bruno, and through sheer action hero charisma actually made it to the

2:53charts, which only encouraged everyone else. Don Johnson gave his heartbeat. Telly Savalas spoke his way through if. What makes these albums immortal isn't that they're bad, because plenty of things are bad, it's the confidence, the unshakable belief that the world has been waiting, holding its breath, for an actor's interpretation of a folk classic. You cannot manufacture that kind of confidence, but it is accessible to everyone. We should all aspire to do one thing in life with the absolute

3:25unearned conviction of William Shatner narrating Rocket Man at the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards, as three separate Shatners appeared on the screen at once. He wasn't singing, he was believing. And honestly, we could all use a little more of that. Just ideally, not on vinyl. Or CD, or tape, or any media. That's why I'm officially announcing that my singing our theme song will be my one and only performance. Until the record deal comes in, which it won't, so we are all safe.

Show Underwriters

4:00U.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. Ife Jones Conservancy.org. And by Diane Bald and the Budman family, restoring significant architecture in Toronto, Los Angeles, Malibu, and Palm Springs.

Architect Anne Fugeron

4:31Architect Anne Fugeron founded her San Francisco firm right out of UC Berkeley. Go Golden Bears! And built it into one of the top residential practices in the country, focusing on affordable housing, women's issues, and underserved communities. The firm has won more than 50 design awards, appeared in more than 200 publications, and the New York Times heaped high praise on one of her houses. Here is Anne Fugeron explaining all of that with George Smart.

The Suspension House

5:02Anne, I want to start with one of your houses. The New York Times selected it as one of the 13 best modern homes in the world. And this is an unusual house, because it spans a creek, and it has a waterfall. And I guess my first question is, how did they let you do this? I didn't think they let houses span creeks anymore. They actually don't. So, the house was an existing structure. That's even more interesting, right? Because it was this kind of ramshackle structure that had been built by these contractors.

5:36I think they had built it initially, or they inherited it, or whatever, and they put it over the creek. And at the time, nobody cared, right? In the 60s, you could do whatever you wanted. Go for it. It was a really bad house. I mean, it had structure coming down into the creek bed, which meant that every time, you know, huge boulders came through down the waterfall, they would, like, knock columns out. And it was facing the wrong way. Well, the ceiling was sloping away from the view of the waterfall. Well, I mean, anyway, generally terrible. So, these clients had bought it because they loved the site, and they came to us, and they said,

6:07what can we do? So, we remodeled it. It was very restrictive in terms of what we could do. We had to save 50% of the existing structure, and we couldn't make it bigger than another 50% of what it was. So, the house is not very large, and it can't be larger than it is. And then it had to remain within the footprints of the existing house, including the deck. So, this is sort of like, you take this, and you take that, and you mix it with this, and what do you get? And so, we are pretty good at this, I think. So, it's unrecognizable, which is a good thing from what it was.

6:37But it's very much where it was before. So, the big brief was to make it much nicer on the inside, and the other brief was to make it much safer so that it didn't have any more structure going down into the creek bed, which was both bad environmentally and also just unsafe, frankly. So, what kind of approvals do you have to go through for something like that? Interestingly enough, we were able to find somebody to help us with the approval process, and you used to be one of the head slanners and also head of the building department,

7:08which was very helpful because without him, I don't know if we ever figured it out. It's sort of like you have to tiptoe, and you have to do this and that, and you have to say the right thing, and you have to say just the right way, and then you have to have everybody come down and look at the site and say, you know, like the fire department came down the road and said, you know we would never protect this house, like it's, we can't get down this road and turn around with our fire truck, and we're like, okay, and then the other inspector has to come out, and you have to get everybody to sort of kind of agree that it's all right. I think they kind of agreed by default because they were like, I don't know.

7:39Yeah, sure. Yeah, sounds great. Yeah, 50%, right? Yeah, okay. Are you going to go away now? And that was kind of what it was like. So, we actually got the approvals pretty quickly, which is very astonishing to me because sometimes these things can take years, and it took us maybe, I don't know, six or seven months. And then when they came out to see it under construction, I mean, the inspectors were literally like, okay, yeah, that's great. Okay, we'll be back in a couple of weeks, okay? I mean, the structure of it is pretty demented. We have this fantastic structural engineer that we've worked with for years,

8:12and he built it like a bridge, and it has these kind of rods that go into the ground horizontally. Actually, there's nine of them per side, nine total, and they're going in, and they're basically holding the building in. And, you know, they've never seen anything like it. We had to get a special machine to drill the holes into the bedrock and stuff, and this guy who built bridges actually did it. So, it was kind of an adventure. It was an adventure, actually. It was amazing. It really sounds like it. I mean, just to have that done at all in, you know, this modern era is an accomplishment.

8:44We didn't believe it would happen. You know, this isn't what happens with these houses. You know, you get this brief, and then you just go through the process, and as you're going through the process, you're like, okay, and then you get to the next step, and you just can't believe it keeps happening. You're like, wow, like, it's just going to happen, and it happened. And I'm happy it's still up. You know, that's the thing. It works, actually. It really works. I mean, we had to weigh the house. That was the other thing. You had to weigh it? Yeah, we had to make sure that every single material we used in the house didn't get so heavy that it would actually deflect too much, and then it would fail or could fail.

9:16Oh, a load. It would be too – Yeah, it had to stay trim. Yeah, yeah, it was a trim house. The suspension trim house. It was really interesting because the clients were like, well, we want to use stone floors. And the structural engineer was like, no, that's too heavy. They're too heavy. So then we had to go to Italy and find stone floors that were cut an eighth of an inch thick and then backed with fiberglass so they could hold up. And I'm telling you, it's like – Oh, that's fascinating. I can see how that would work. Yeah, you really learned stuff. Yeah, yeah, it totally worked. And it totally did work. But, you know, you start with the clients are like, we want stone.

9:49And you're like, you have a house over a creek, and you're trying to bridge the two. So, yeah, the weighing stuff is pretty interesting. Well, let's go back in your history. So I assume that you have a favorite kind of tire you like to drive your car on? Yes. Well, yeah, like Michelin, you mean? Yes. Yes, I do. Yeah, yeah, yes. Because my father worked for Michelin for decades. So absolutely. And so did my grandfather. And were they in the era that invented the Michelin restaurant ratings? It started, I think, about five or ten years after my father started working for them.

10:23But, yes, it was part of it because I remember he would have the little guide in the car when we were in France. You know, it didn't exist in the United States. We'd go around driving in our Citroën, of course, with our Michelin tires. And we'd be going to Clermont-Ferrand, which is where the headquarters of Michelin was. And then we'd be kind of cruising around in the south of France trying to find places to stop and things like that. And my father would have the little guide all opened up and checked out. Yeah, that's fun. So that would have been, what, in the late 60s, early 70s? Yeah. It was. So my father worked there, actually, from starting in 55 all the way to 1970.

10:58Okay. So about 15 years. And then when he went back to France. So we lived in Amsterdam, and then we moved to the United States. And then when he went back to France, he actually started working for Otis Elevators. Now, I remember the Citroën you were mentioning of that era. They were kind of long and beautiful and had those little yellow lights peeking off the back. Yeah. Right? Was that what you had? Totally. Yeah. Yeah, that's what we had. And the inside was this beautiful red kind of felt wool seats. And then the car would go up and down.

11:30So you could have it go up and down depending on how close you were to the edge of the road and what you wanted to miss. And it also had automatic transmission because you basically didn't have a foot pedal, right, to change gears. You would just do it on the top of the thing. So it was a beautiful car. I still remember it. My father would take us out in the car in Paris, and we would do what was called Paris by night. And we thought that was the most exciting thing that you'd ever heard of. So we'd drive through Paris at night looking at all the monuments and stuff.

12:01It was fabulous. Yeah, it was nice. And I assume with that guide, you got to eat some wonderful meals around France. Oh, we did. My father was a big gourmet, and he also looked really good wine. So we had many, many great meals, yes.

Wellesley and Early Activism

12:14Now, when you came back to the United States to go to school at Wellesley, was that the same era or close to it where Hillary Clinton was at Wellesley? Yeah, she was there, I think she was there maybe five years before I was or something like that. Yeah, I went there in 1973, basically. I can't remember when she graduated, but I've looked it up. I mean, we were not that far off, you know, maybe six or seven years or something like that. Yeah, it was still a big feminist bastion. It was really interesting, actually. It was a great school for me. I mean, I really liked it because I made an incredible group of female friends

12:47that were all extremely politically motivated and stuff, and that sort of stuck. Well, you had been an activist since your teenage years. Yeah, I had, so it fit. I just kept at it, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I loved it, yeah. So I went there and, you know, met this group of incredibly smart women with really great teachers, too. And I just learned a lot. I'm actually about to go back for my reunion, which I've only gone back once, so this is going to be fun. Now, what was your first protest? Against the Vietnam War in Paris.

13:20Okay. In 1969, just after the 1968 movement in Paris. So I was a teenager. I was going to school there. I guess by then was I in high school. Not quite. I was, like, at the end of middle school or something like that. And there were just protests every single weekend for everything, having to do with the Vietnam War and stuff like that. So I'd just be out in the streets, you know, tear gas and stuff like that. And then I'd go home to stay with my grandparents and, of course, would never tell them what I had done, right, because they would be terrified.

13:50So I'd be like, yeah, yeah, I had a great afternoon. It was lovely, you know. If they had known, they would be like, oh. They would have sent me back to the boarding school. So, yeah. They didn't ask you, what's that weird smell that you have with the tear gas? Yeah, I'd be outside, like, changing clothes and stuff. I don't remember exactly what I did. But, no, they never did. And I don't know if they knew what I was doing, but whatever it was, it didn't get discussed. That's good, I guess. It was a really exciting time, you know. I mean, I grew up in a time where you believe that political power existed,

14:20which seems to be a time that we might not be in right now. Yeah. So what led you to architecture? You know, that's a really good question. I come from a family of business people. I mean, my grandfather had a bit of an artist in him. You know, he was a good violin player and he painted. But he was in business, too. I had always been drawn to things that were, like, drawing-related or three-dimensionally related. I was left-handed, which made me sort of different, I think. You know, your brain is wired differently. I think we know that now. And then I had friends who are architects whom I met when I was, like, you know, 15, 16.

14:55They just started architecture school. They were in their early 20s or something. And it sounded like the perfect combination for me of, like, something that you do where, you know, it demands a certain artistic level of engagement. But it also has a lot to do with kind of the real world and how things are put together and how you interact with buildings. And so it just seemed like the right fit. And where did you go to school for architecture? I went to Wellesley and took classes at MIT because they had an exchange program. And that's where I really took my first architecture classes. And then that's where Don Linden, who actually was of MLTW, I don't know, Linden Moore, encouraged me to apply to architecture school.

15:33So I applied, and I wound up going to Berkeley, where he came to teach a few years later.

Redesigning Planned Parenthood

15:39So that was fun. Architecture and activism came together for you at least at one point, which was redesigning a Planned Parenthood facility. Yeah. Was that the first time? Yeah, I mean, I think I also, you know, I was very involved in doing housing and affordable housing when I worked at different architecture firms before I started my own practice. But it was very important for me that architecture also had the capacity to sort of be a social art. And so we talk about humane modernism or humane architecture. And for me, it was this idea that, you know, you can make great spaces for everyone.

16:13So the Planned Parenthood work really came from me offering my services, not as an architect, but just as a woman, after they had shot those doctors in Boston, where somebody came in with a gun and basically shot a few people in a clinic. And I went then to the Planned Parenthood in San Francisco and I said, you know, anything we can do, I'd love to help and see that. And then we started talking and they found out I was an architect and they said, well, we really need help with is, you know, security upgrades. Like, what are we going to do now? Like, how are we going to keep people out of our clinics?

16:43You know, we're open door, blah, blah, blah. So I started this adventure with them that lasted for over a decade where we kind of redesigned their clinics, but we redesigned it with this idea that they were more secure, but they were also just better. They worked better. They were nicer to look at so that you didn't feel like you had to go into a prison. There were two ways that people were really starting to redesign clinics. They're either doing the this is a fortress, you're completely safe. But once you go in there, you kind of feel marginalized or this is really safe and it actually is safe.

17:13But we're going to make it look like you're not going into a prison. You know, you're here for health care and you're entitled to as nice a place as possible. So that's the route we took and Planned Parenthood really liked it. So we did a lot of work for them, the local chapter. Specifically, I'm curious, how do you make a facility like that both safe and welcoming? I mean, what do you have to do from the time they walk up to the building? So the first thing you want to do is you want staff to be able to see who's coming.

17:43Right. So they didn't have that. So cameras and things like that make that pretty easy. And installing a buzzer system is pretty simple, too, because that's standard and people don't feel like you're just, you know, making it too hard for them to get into. It's just like, oh, are you here for an appointment or are you just not here for an appointment? And then you come into a space that is usually contained, though you don't necessarily feel that it's contained. And the staff is behind a piece of glass and that glass is actually bullet resistant, as is the wall that staff sits behind. But it's all disguised in ways with, you know, nice colors and materials and wood and this and that.

18:16So you don't get the sense that you've come in and it's like you're walking into, you know, St. Quentin or something. But it is there. And so what you're trying to do is you're trying to make staff feel safe so they can do their jobs. But you're trying to kind of disguise these measures so that people that are clients don't have to feel like that's the first thing that they think about. Oh, wow. Bullet resistant material. Right. So it's all hidden. And, you know, so we had to learn how to do all this stuff. Like I had no idea. Like they said, oh, yeah, please make it safer. And I was like, oh, God, what does that mean? And so here is like calling everywhere in the country. You know, Texas seemed to be a good place to call because they have a lot of guns there.

18:50How do you do this? And they're like, oh, lady, I don't want to tell you about bullet resistant glass and stuff like that. It was just incredible. And we learned how to do it. Well, how do you do something like make bulletproof glass or enclosures more beautiful? So, for example, for the bulletproof glass, we did it in a way that we put them into these beautiful steel frames. So very custom steel frames. And we also held the glass off of the wall by just a little bit. So sound, you know, goes through very small apertures.

19:21Right. It doesn't need. And so that way the glass was kind of floating. You didn't have to go up to a piece of glass and talk into the glass. You know, you can do that sometimes. Right. Yeah. Very, very. Very unsettling. Yes, exactly. Whereas here you could just talk right into the glass. People could hear you. It didn't seem like that big a deal. And so that was it. You know, we introduced a lot of color. And color is a very cheap way of making things seem cheerful. Yes. And it's easy to do. So that was the other thing. And we used like unusual materials. We used cork on floors. And, you know, we just did a lot of things. We did nicer lighting.

19:52We did some super graphics everywhere. So you'd come in and there'd be all these great graphics. And you could read very easily like what you were doing or what the mission of the clinic was or what the mission of Planned Parenthood was. So there was just a lot of different levels at which we kind of created all these sort of environments that were better to be in. What clients have you had since then you've had to do something similar for? Well, we've done a lot of affordable housing. So that's not quite as dramatic. And that's been part of kind of continuing this kind of crusade towards, you know, socially relevant work.

20:24We also did this beautiful remodel of this building in Oakland that's called the Capers Center for Social Impact, which was really there, the idea of this organization that was started by Mitch Kapoor and his wife, Frida, which is to make all sort of tech jobs more diversified. Something that's not very popular this week, but it was very popular five years ago. And that had a lot of different ways in which we made the building as open as possible and talked about vertical integration of a building versus horizontal so that the idea that people at different places who worked in the building had a sense of what other organizations were doing.

21:00And that was very important to us for people to understand what the foundation does and why does it and things like that. So that was kind of a continuation of that idea.

Women in Architecture

21:10Now, you've worked for a long time in helping bring along women architects. Yes, yes. And encouraging them and mentoring them. So are we at the point where gender doesn't matter anymore? People are just architects or are there still more ways to go? More ways to go. Tell me about that. Well, I mean, people say this all the time. You know, there are 50 percent women architects in school, so it doesn't matter anymore. Well, there are 50 percent women in my class in Berkeley 450 million years ago.

21:40So somehow a lot of these women disappeared. I still think that when you look at the world of architecture, it is still run at the higher level by mostly men. And it's pretty easy when you start going to these AIA meetings, you know, and everybody has white hair and is like over 60 or 70, you know, like me. But mostly guys, right? And the clients are mostly men because the development world is still very much kind of of the male persuasion. So I feel that women still struggle. They start, they get discouraged, they leave.

22:12You know, they talk about the missing 37 or 38 percent or whatever of a lot of women who just don't stick it out because by the time they have children or they do other things, they just find themselves incapable of going back into the profession. And I also think that it is hard for women to find their voices in architecture. So the typical thing that happens is that women either go to work in larger firms or they start to work with a partner, you know, maybe their husband or something like that. So there's a fair amount of women partners in firms.

22:42There are very few women that own their own architectural firm, like I did, who don't have a kind of male partner that helps to sort of kind of ease the. Yeah. So I still feel like we're not done, but we're not done in anything for women's rights. I mean, you know, there are very few professions where you can say that we've done, like we don't have to do anymore. Right. And the kind of politics that we have in this country, like we're just going backwards. What is the most important thing for architecture as a profession to pay attention to right now? I think there's a bunch of different things.

23:13I think we have to remember that we make environments that are going to last way longer than we are. So I want us to be cognizant of the fact that we're not building for just today, but that most buildings stand up for a long time. I mean, they last usually longer than we do. Right. So I think that that's very important because a lot of things are just being driven only by costs. And that's not good because that's not a good thing. And then I think we have to be very careful about how we build things for the environment. Right. So even for us, like the suspension house was a great thing because we're reusing an existing building.

23:44Right. Like every time that we can use pieces of a building, we're only too happy to do it. Like we feel like, OK, somebody spent a lot of time, a lot of energy making this thing. And even if it doesn't suit today, we can make it so we can again have a second or third life. Right. And so that's the other thing. And then there's, of course, you know, other environmental things that you can do. But I think that that's the main thing. But I want quality to stay. I want people to understand that. Like, you know, we were always like, oh, I'm going to change. Right. And I'm like, well, what do you do when you go to Europe?

24:15And they go, well, we go see buildings. And I'm like, there you go. You go see buildings. Right. And those buildings are still there because somebody, you know, really paid attention, did beautiful things and also kept them up. Right. And if you just went to Paris and there was nothing to look at in terms of buildings, you wouldn't go there. Right. I mean, it's all about that. And we seem to forget that, particularly in America, I think. In America, it seems like we have a lot more issue with having buildings of different eras side by side where you go through Europe and you've got a modern building next to an 800-year-old building.

24:49Exactly. And we get completely crazy here. And then, you know, anything that's more than 40 years old now in South Africa is considered historic. Right. And you're like, no, no, that's not the right relevant way of thinking about it. What you have to think about is, you know, what's the quality of this structure versus this one and which ones need to be saved and which ones, frankly, didn't make it and need to be thought about again or need to be reengineered. And I think they're better in Europe about that because they just have a lot more older things to look at. So they're less kind of attached to the thing that we like to call, you know, historic.

25:21Now, tell me what you've got coming up. What projects are you working on now that we'll see in 26 and 27? So we're working mostly on single-family homes right now because that's just where the market's been. So we worked on a lot of affordable housing and also just market-rate housing for like seven years and did like over 700 units of housing. And then that market just died. Economics, as you've probably heard, were pretty bad. It's really expensive to build in California and it's really expensive to build in San Francisco. So between the recession, higher interest rates and all the rest.

25:55So we didn't build anything. So we keep talking about having to build housing. But in Northern California, it's sort of been really bad. So we kind of had to fold back in and sort of work mostly on single-family homes. There's one that's a completely new house, but all the rest of them are really remodels. So it's just like, you know, do this, take it apart. You know, you just peel them apart and put them back together again. Unrecognizable in the end, but suited for the new generation of owners. What materials do you find in these houses that has deteriorated the most? Is it the wood? Is it the concrete?

26:26Is it what tends to have to be replaced frequently? Um, I think the thing that you have to be the most careful about is the exterior skin, I think. And so, you know, there's a lot of really bad stucco jobs, right? Because people just don't know how to use the material properly and they don't know how to make it so that it lives well. So, you know, water gets behind it and everything rots and then it starts to fall over. And it was for a long time a very cheap material. It was like the poor man's way of doing stuff. So that's not been very good. And when you see stucco on buildings in Europe, they're always on top of either concrete block or brick blocks or whatever they are or concrete.

27:06So they live a lot longer. They do a lot better, right? So I think that's been one of the materials that, as much as I like it, we're very careful about when we use it because we don't feel like it does very well. I think any material can do really well if you design it properly and if you take the time to really figure out how to engineer it and you use it for the right place. So, for example, you know, you wouldn't want to do stucco on this house that we did that's called the fall house. It's along the ocean. Oh, yeah, that's a beautiful one. Yes, I've seen that. You wouldn't have wanted to do stucco on that house right there by the ocean.

27:38And the amount of spray that you get from the ocean and the amount of wind that you get, the stuff wouldn't have held up, right? So that's not the right material for that spot. Now, 50 miles up the coast and further inland, it's fine, right? So you just have to have a sense of what you're building and where. And for us, that's a big part of what's interesting about architecture and that we enjoy thinking about, you know, is like, how are we going to make this thing work where it is? So that, you know, 20 years from now, it still looks great. So that's part of it. So that house and the fall house, we still go there and it still looks fantastic.

28:10I mean, it was clad in copper, which was not the cheapest idea. But on the other hand, the clients had to do nothing to it the last 15 years. I read that, like most young architects, when you got early commissions, you were very excited about the designing of the building. And that nowadays, you're much more interested in the site and having the building fit the site. Is that right? No, that's true. I think that as you become better at doing architecture, I mean, the great thing about architecture is I do think that if you're paying attention and you've got some kind of aspiration, you do get better at it.

28:45Or at least you get faster at it, which is not a bad thing, right? Because it's a pretty slow process. But for me now, more and more, when I look at these incredible sites in California and there's less and less of them, right, because we're kind of running out of space, then the amount of respect that I have for those sites has grown immensely. And so my first instinct is how am I going to put a building on this site, right? And how am I going to do the best possible building for where we're at? So this is the thing that we think about all the time and that inspires us, whether it's a house in San Francisco, frankly, and it's, you know, glue it against other houses or it's a house in Los Altos.

29:20We just finished one fairly recently called the Wavelet where, you know, it was a very tight site, not very nice in downtown Los Altos, which is pretty uninteresting as a spot. But where you could really landlock the building into its site and do something pretty interesting with the building and its relationship to the site and thus how the clients could live in the house. And what they wanted. So, you know, things like that. Well, that's really cool. Yeah. And thanks so much for talking with me. This has been fun. Yeah, it's very great. Thank you. That was George's conversation with Anne Fugeron.

Architect Lorenda Speer

29:54Lorenda Speer has lived much of her life in Miami. A graduate in fine arts from Brown, architecture from Columbia, and landscape architecture from Florida International University. She's the co-founder of Architectonica, one of the most famous firms in the world. Since 1977, Architectonica has reshaped Miami. Lorenda has won the Rome Prize and has taught at Harvard, the University of Miami, Florida International University, and the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

30:26Welcome to the show, Lorenda. Thank you. Lorenda, it's so good to have you on. Your love of Miami and your impact of Miami is really profound. Our research team actually found a poem about it. See if you can tell me who wrote this. That's my yearbook.

31:08Yeah, that's a really beautiful poem. It seems to symbolize this relationship that you have with Miami in making it more beautiful and connecting with some of its heritage. I mean, maybe, but I can't speak for my 17-year-old self as being that prescient. Okay. Oh, take credit for it. Yeah, I think you can take some credit for this. We're going to talk about some of your projects and your long history soon, but I want to know about your first build project, I believe, which was the Pink House.

Designing the Pink House

31:42When did that get started? Okay, the Pink House was designed for my parents in Miami Shores, and the house was completed in 1980. At the time, Miami was a city that was very modest, with modest ambitions, and not a very big Latin population in those days. The buildings were not very impressive.

32:12There was kind of a little modern movement, but they were very low-slung buildings with jalousy windows, pretty much. The only towers, there were probably one or two towers downtown, and there was absolutely no color in Miami of those days. So, we designed a house for my parents, who were a very conservative couple. They were not, like, flamboyant people in any way, shape, or form. I guess what I could say is they had ambitions of having a really nice modern house,

32:45and they decided to give their daughter, an architecture student at the time, you know, the ability to take on the project. So, they hired you. Well, we weren't paid, but they allowed me to design the house for them. She's one of that long tradition of architects, Tom, that their parents give them a big first commission, and then their career takes off. Yeah. Or not. Or yes. Yeah. But I think the only remarkable thing, the house was a modern house.

33:16It was built on a piano nobile, which was, in those days, there was no flood criteria or elevation required. This house could have easily just sat on the earth. We chose to raise it because we had at least that much, you know, foresight to appreciate the fact that being on the bay, you could get flooded. Most people in Miami at the time didn't think twice about flooding. The early settlers did, but later they forgot about it. And so, we elevated the house, put the pool up on the piano nobile, and closed it to the street, effectively, and opened it to the view.

33:54Then, in addition to that, we had seven tones of red that delineated each of the seven walls from west to east. Of course, those became a bone of contention for the neighborhood, because every other house in the neighborhood was a beige, white, maybe a light yellow at the most, but nothing particular. So, suddenly, this pinkish thing just dropped in front of everyone, and there was a lot of outcry.

34:26I think the Miami Herald ran an article on it, and it was Neighbors See Red over Pink House. I could hear that one coming. And they did. They were so angry. But really, there was no legal way they could stop us, because there was no code that delineated the palette of the neighborhood. So, we just were able to paint it what we chose in the end, to the dismay of all around.

34:58And I guess the neighbors had their torches and pitchforks out, wanting to spear you. They really did. They were really unkind. But, you know, neighbors throughout our whole career have had their torches and pitchforks out against us. There was a lot more to complain about than architecture, but certainly, that's like, everybody feels like they're a better architect than you anyway, so they complain about it.

35:23And then, as your firm grew, you really started designing buildings that shaped some of the modern Miami that we have today. And I recall articles at that time, actually through my dad, that connected you with, you know, the Miami Vice show, in a way, that they kind of came up at the same time. That's true. The Atlantis was featured in the opening credits of Miami Vice, and it became a kind of symbol of the city for the rest of the world.

35:57Kind of like on Dallas, that mansion that they show the helicopter flying into became the symbol of Dallas. Yeah, I guess that is true. But I think this show really, the Miami Vice show, showed Miami's potential to everyone in the world, which had not been really recognized prior. So, I guess the Atlantis became part of that.

Growth and Scale in Miami

36:23And what caused Miami to grow so much and have all the, you know, hundreds of towers that we know of it today? I think, let's analyze this. The first thing, when, what date was the Mariel Boatlift? I think that was 1980. Yeah. Prior to that, there'd been influx from Cuba, mostly, of Spanish-speaking community. But many of the people who came early, early on were actually professionals.

36:54So, my father, a surgeon, encountered many Cuban physicians who gladly took jobs as janitorial staff in the hospitals that he worked at. These are people who came after the revolution in 1959 and 1960. I feel like that was the first wave. The early wave was mostly professionals. And they came early, and they would arrive in Miami, now sometimes with or without their kids, who had been sent in advance in that Peter Pan program, which the Catholic Church organized to house any kids coming over whose families were not able to make it.

37:34So, those kids often went to Nebraska or Oregon or who knows where in the country and were taken in by Catholic families who gladly took care of them as long as necessary. But when the families, the parents started coming over, mostly the early ones were professionals, and they would take any job they could get, though they were trained, you know, much more highly than that. They had had to leave everything behind. So, slowly by 1980, when the Marielle Boatlift happened, you know, our city was filling up with a whole new type of population.

38:08Then the sleepy kind of southern Miamians who prior to that, when they referred to the war, when I was little, when my neighbors would refer to the war, what were they referring to? The Civil War. Wow. Wow. Yeah. And they would, you know, they were still arguing that they didn't lose. Yeah. The unfortunate war of northern aggression. Yes. Yeah. Right. So, that was Miami before, and then after it became a new place. It became a place that was much more international.

38:40And as the city became really a Spanish-speaking city, people from all over Latin America were attracted to it. And some of our early buildings developers were either from Canada or from Latin America. I remember that my dad, who was an architect here in North Carolina, was a huge fan of yours and your firm. And all he could talk about was architectonica all the time, just in the 80s. You know, building after building after building was going up. And not only were they functional, which you would hope, but they were really beautiful.

39:15How did your firm attain such success getting developers to incorporate the beauty of these buildings? Because that's not always the case. It really isn't always the case. And, you know, I think the early developers were more naive. The new developers are just so driven by, I guess, their financial armature that you have a hard time sneaking anything by them. So, you know, and even when they get what they consider, like, way better architects than we are from Europe or whatever, they import them to Miami to do buildings.

39:54Those guys suffer. Their designs suffer a lot on the value engineering side. Okay. So, I think the early developers were just more open and less tied to their… Their financials. Yeah. Less market-driven. Yeah. I think even though they, of course, wanted to not end up in the red, they weren't, like, crazed. They weren't crazed. But they were willing to make more of a statement in that. I think so. And I do believe that could it possibly be true that because of the abundance of information, let's say now, and the kind of, not lack of information then, but, like, people stayed in their lane back then.

40:40Like, if you were a doctor, you were not going to tell an architect what to do. Yeah. Or if you were an attorney and you hired an architect, you wouldn't tell them what to do. It wouldn't cross your mind because in the same way, I'm not going to tell my… I wouldn't then in those days tell my doctor what to do. I wouldn't say, oh, no, no, no, you're wrong. Mr. Google said. But let's fast forward to now and say, as I said before, nobody's staying in their lane, and they all know more about design than you do. And so whatever you propose, they give it short shrift, and they're going to be the last word on the design, for better or worse.

41:19I was really impressed that mid-career, you went back to school and got a landscape architecture degree and shifted a lot of your philosophy to prioritizing the site over a building. What caused that shift for you? I thought that the land and the way you used it was probably the most important factor, especially in the design of buildings that fit into urban fabrics. And that it was the idea of doing buildings that were sculptural in and of themselves or artistic in and of themselves, though not uninteresting, was really besides the point.

41:59And the real deal is to fit a building onto the site and to, especially in South Florida, have an amazing tropical landscape that surrounds it. If the building is elsewhere, whatever landscape is available. I think that if you live in a high-rise, at least if your ground plane or your whatever level the pool is on or whatever deck is created, if it's really landscaped, it really creates a very big difference.

42:29For example, in the Brickell City Center, which incorporates hotel offices and apartments, the main deck used by the two condominium buildings is landscaped with native material and really feels like you're on the ground plane just about because the material is very large and feels as if you're not up there. Now, your firm is going to be celebrating an anniversary soon.

43:00What are you going to do for that? We are creating an audio book for everyone to listen to, understand our history, and hear the original voices of those who created the firm. So will that be the architects? Are you going to have clients, too, talking in that? Possibly. Possibly. Okay. There can't be too many voices in that book because it'll get a little too chaotic. And will there be parties? I hope there's some parties. Well, I can't be the party planner this time. I have to be the audible book planner.

43:34So if there's a party to be done, it won't be done by me. Okay, but you will definitely be there, I hope. Yeah, you would go to the party, right? Yeah, yeah. I'll go.

Working with Morris Lapidus

43:44Did you ever work with Morris Lapidus before he passed away? I did. Tell me about him because I'm sorry I'm missing him. I worked with him for two summers when I was at Columbia Architecture. And he was a very educated, very erudite person who, to me then, seemed from a different generation, like he seemed from some bygone time, who always dressed up to come to the office,

44:14and who, at the time, I felt the work he was doing was not as good as his early work. When I went back to Columbia during the school year, Robert Stern ran the lecture series. And I asked him, after my first summer working for Morris, if he would invite Morris to give a lecture. And he quickly answered me very sharply. And he had a great sense of humor, too, by the way. Not on your life.

44:46I'm not inviting that guy. He's, like, really sold out. There's no way we're having him here. Okay. So then I worked for Morris again the second summer and again went back to Robert Stern and asked if he would allow Morris to lecture. And he finally relented and said, okay, I will ask him just because you asked. So Morris came back to Columbia for the first time ever since his graduation. And he knew full well that he was not held in high esteem by the academic architects teaching at the school.

45:20Yes. And he addressed that in his talk. And I wonder whether Avery Library has a recording of that talk, because I believe the first intro before he even started was saying, I know you don't think much of my work, but I'll tell you how I started and I'll tell you how I got to be where I am. That's great. And as he explained his work, it became more interesting because he explained how he started in retail design

45:52and how you had to attract to the customers and there was a kind of theatrical aspect to the work. And he had then incorporated that feeling into the early buildings he did, especially in Miami Beach, like the Fountain Blow. And Eden Rock. And Eden Rock. Yes. Mm-hmm. Amazing buildings. Lorenda, thank you so much for joining us. The firm is Architect Tonica, and you really should go to their website and see these decades of really incredible architecture.

46:23And if you're wondering about how it's spelled, it's A-R-Q-U-I-T-E-C-T-O-N-I-C-A, architectonica.com. Thanks for joining us, Lorenda. Thank you. We were speaking with Lorenda Speer of Miami's Architect Tonica.

Musical Guest Aviana Gedler

46:43Today's musical guest, Chicago-based Aviana Gedler, grew up in West Des Moines, Iowa. Aviana trained classically from a young age and soon was arranging, composing, and playing the electric bass, drums, and guitar. She placed second in the Ella Fitzgerald International Jazz Vocal Competition and won Downbeat Magazine's Best Vocal Jazz Soloist Award two years in a row. Her debut album is It Is What It Is. Here's George's conversation with Aviana Gedler.

47:15Aviana, you are basically the fresh face of jazz now. Recently graduated? Recently, yes. May 25. 25. Yes. And you're on the road doing things that fresh faces do, right? Yeah, I'm living the dream, honestly. So you're touring? Yes. I mean, this was a mini tour, I would call it. We were just in D.C. and then Durham today, and now I'm heading back tomorrow. Now, where do you live? I live in Chicago.

47:46Chicago. Oh, great. Yes. What a great jazz town. Yeah. Couldn't complain at all. So many nice clubs there. I love it. Yes. It's quite a vibrant scene. I just moved in August, so still getting my bearings, but there's so much to do and opportunities to play. It's been amazing. Now, you have a new EP coming out. I do. Yes. Tell me about that. Yeah. It's called Memory Loss. It's a very, very compact EP. It'll just be three songs.

48:18But I studied at the New England Conservatory, and I really got into songwriting, dove into my songwriting when I studied there. And because New England Conservatory, the skill set there is amazing, and there's not only the jazz program, but the classical program. I really wanted to take advantage of the classical students that were there and the instrumentalists. So I also was doing a lot of arranging. So these songs are arranged for strings, a string quartet, a woodwind quintet, and a rhythm section. So I did these three songs on my senior recital and just really wanted to play with as many people as I could. So that was how the instrumentation happened. But the songs have been around for a couple years now.

49:11You wrote them both? Yes, I wrote them all. Oh, cool. Well, from her new EP, Memory Loss, here is Home Song.

49:43Home Song.

50:13There's a place in my mind That I find bittersweet Every time I arrive

50:46And think of all the memories They come in slowly, strongly So I close my eyes gently Going out for a drive

51:16Late at night Interstate 35 Felt just right A land of many SUVs You see I'm driving Going

51:49Probably somewhere Nowhere Walnut Woods Riverside Prairie light Where my heart

52:19Coincide I'll abide Oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

53:01Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

53:34Aviana, tell me about how it is for students and competitions. You've been in a couple of them. Yeah. Do you like go and like hit six in one season or do you just pick one and prepare all for that? How does it work in that world? The competition world? It's really I mean, it's up to you.

54:06I think like while I was in school, I really wanted to try them out. And I found that the ones that I've applied to are very much it's kind of open, like how much you want to put into it, into the quality of the recordings and the the repertoire that you choose. But there's a lot of room for creativity as well. So the Ella Fitzgerald one, you get to choose your song. Same with the Ravenscroft Jazz Prize. So I had a lot of fun with those and they can be daunting, but I try not to go in with that mindset.

54:39Just try to be myself. But yeah. Are there any competitions where you don't get to choose your song? I don't. You know, that's a good question. Probably not. Sometimes they have more criteria. Okay. Than others. But like these ones that I did were very like the Ella Fitzgerald one, they focus on a composer and these composers have such vast repertoires. Repertoires. So it felt like it was a whole vision board there. And same with the Ravenscroft. It was more just about the style, like uptempo or ballad or bossanova or something.

55:15I didn't know if there was something like a Let It Be competition where everybody sings the same song and they look for the best stylings. I guess, you know, what I'm thinking more of is like when you audition for something, which is different than a competition. But a lot of times auditions for programs or schools, they do want to hear a specific song. Okay. What kind of songs do they request typically? I auditioned for one school that wanted a bebop. They wanted Donna Lee. Okay. And they just wanted to hear you like improvise over it. Yeah.

55:45And that one is burning fast. So it's, they just want to know that you can. You can do it. You can keep up. You can do it. Exactly. But, and that's, I understand. So, and it's always a good challenge. Now you have your own band? I do. Yeah. It's called April State. Okay. Yeah. We just started it in Chicago. So it was very fresh, very emerging. But we've had a few shows now. Friends from my first music school. I went to community college, music school in Iowa, where I'm from. And they all live in Chicago now.

56:16Is that the Iowa side, Field of Dreams, or one of the other pieces of Iowa? Oh, no. It's the urban side of Iowa. As urban as it can get. Des Moines. Des Moines. Good old Des Moines. Yes. West Des Moines, technically. But, yeah. Now, I seem to recall, didn't that flood quite a bit? Oh, my gosh. Yeah. We had to put up flood walls around my house when I was, in 2008 was the worst one. Okay. We got hit really bad in the Raccoon River area. Ooh, yeah. So, yeah. It's intense out there. Well, let's hear another song from the same EP.

56:48This one is the title track, Memory Loss. If he knew how much it hurt me when he called, maybe when I tried to leave, he wouldn't have stopped.

57:18But the tune went out of kilter as the years went by. There isn't any other thing that I could say to change the fact that it'll never be the same.

57:55But I still keep holding on. Oh, I'm racing against my mind. And I'm running out of time. And I'm running out of time. Before too long, I'll try to picture his face and won't remember his eyes.

58:35I won't remember the how or why I ever cared at all. Distance just became a new unwelcome guest. Oh, I'm racing. Oh, I'm racing against my mind.

59:07Sometimes I can't tell if that was for the good Lately, it's been hard for me to wonder why If I think too much about it Then I'll start to cry

59:40I know I gotta, but I'm scared of moving on Cause what's the point if it's already been this long? And I'm still here, grasping at stars I'm racing against my mind

1:00:23And I'm losing him Every time Before too long I'll try to picture his face And won't remember his eyes Or his laugh or a smile for a while I feel you slipping through my fingers again And I still want to pretend

1:00:55That I remember you now or you then Or the how or the when I ever cared at all Aviana, what are your goals right now?

1:01:25I know everybody wants to play Carnegie Hall Right? But where are some of the venues that you're scoping out That you want to perform? Yeah I really want to invest in the Chicago scene first So there's some spots in Chicago I would love to play at Winner's Jazz Club Andy's Jazz Club I would love to have a show at the Hungry Brain Those are all really great spots in the city There's, it feels like there's countless places So I feel like those are my priorities right now

1:01:55I mean, yeah, Carnegie Hall would be great Yeah If the Carnegie people are listening If they're listening If they'll be there Here's your spot They'll buy a ticket, absolutely I think it'd be really cool to play somewhere in Europe as well I got to play in Brazil for the first time last summer Just at a restaurant But that was really special as well Because I really, I love to sing in Portuguese I'm learning the language right now So I would love to, like somewhere in Sao Paulo or in Rio Yeah I'm going there over New Year's this year

1:02:27So I haven't even looked at what like the spots are there You could do one of those cruise gigs where you sign on for You know, that used to be a dream of mine as well And it sort of fell to the wayside Yeah But I still would do that if it was a short one Yeah I'm terrified of the ocean though Oh, that's kind of a drawback I know The ocean is involved, I gotta tell you Oh Darn it Okay, well, maybe not But I That's It's just scary to me

1:02:57How about a river? Are you okay with a river? River, yes River is great Okay But there's like a riverboat jazz cruise There is Oh, okay All up and down the Mississippi See, that's my dream That's great right there There's some company called American Something That advertises on PBS all the time That has these cruises up and down the Mississippi There you go, yeah Oh, yeah I'll have to look into that Yeah Aviana, thanks so much for talking with me This has been a real pleasure Thank you, George Thanks for listening U.S. Modernist Radio is underwritten by the Brent R. Harris Charitable Trust

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1:04:30I'm Tom Geild George and I'll be back soon with another non-Grammy winning edition of U.S. Modernist Radio Maybe a Juno though Wellesizin Paul But with the UK Oh Ed And throughout the cole Tocharge A Juno Or A Juno Or Which Love Ene harvest The