#472/Steven Holl + Dimitra Tsachrelia + Authors Robert Ivy, Cathleen McGuigan, Peter MacKeith + Musical Guest Halie Loren

Where architects meet clients

0:00Hey, this is Lucy Woodward, and my new album is I Need to Roam, and you are listening to U.S. Modernist Radio. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Oh, I don't care what mama don't allow, gonna draw my modern anyhow. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Welcome to U.S. Modernist Radio, where we talk and laugh with people who enjoy, own, create, dream about, preserve, love, and hate modernist architecture, the most exciting and controversial buildings in the world.

0:38I'm Tom Geild. Today's episode brings together some big names in design, architects Stephen Hall and Dimitra Chakrelia. Then we'll hear authors Robert Ivey, Kathleen McGuigan, and Peter McKeith discussing their new book, Out There, Architecture Across America. Finally, our returning musical guest, for whom we swoon, Haley Loren. And now here is your host, always swooning for a well-built cantilever, Mr. Modernism, George Smart.

1:09Hey, thanks, Tom. Every species has a habitat. Trout live in cold streams. Pandas live in bamboo forests. And architects like to hang out with other architects, sustained by sustainably farmed lattes, panel discussions, and the warm glow of being understood. This would be fine, charming even, if clients also live there, but they do not. Clients live everywhere else, at rotary lunches, chamber of commerce mixers, golf courses, gun shows, boat shows, home shows, football games, and walnut-paneled steakhouses with 40-ounce tomahawks where deals get done.

1:49Most architects have never been to any of these places for business reasons. They prefer to be at an AIA lecture titled, Thresholds of Liminality, Reconsidering Haptic Sensibilities, Surrounded by Other Architects. If you're going fishing, where are the most fish? At a beautiful lake or at the bait store? An architect will drive three hours to attend a conference with 200 other architects, but they won't cross the street for a Builders Association breakfast full of people who award actual commissions.

2:21Why? Because the competitors will appreciate the work. The breakfast people don't want to know about design theory. How annoying. The woman who will someday spend $2 to $20 million on a building is, right now, at a fundraiser for her local hospital. She is wearing pleated khakis from Walmart. She is telling a boring story about her family's boat. She has never heard of Peter Zumthor and is happier for it. And when the moment comes, when she turns to the guy across the table and says,

2:53We're thinking of building a new office. Do you know anybody? That guy across the table will be a dentist. And the dentist will recommend his brother-in-law. You cannot catch trout in a secluded bamboo forest. The fish are simply not there. No matter how refined you're fly casting. No matter how many awards you've won from other fly fishermen. Fisher people. Architects know where the clients are. They just find those places uncomfortable. The Rotary Club involves small talk about football.

3:24The chamber mixer has wall-to-wall carpeting in a color the architect can only describe as beige sadness. Someone at the golf outing will say, They are not fans of these modernistic new buildings and mean no offense. But the architect will have to take three Advil. Civilian habitats are full of people who ask what you charge before asking what you believe. And the architect's immune system rejects this like a bad kidney transplant. Engineers are better. A school board member at a Lions Club meeting says,

3:55The high school gym leaks. And the architect hears an invitation to reconsider what a gymnasium is. Meanwhile, the engineer says, We can fix that by March for $40,000. And walks out with an appointment for next Tuesday. Engineers join things. Contractors coach Little League. Realtors will attend anything. Even the opening of an envelope. These professions grasp early that work comes from the people who aren't you. Most architects' networking strategy, by comparison, is to be so brilliant that clients should form a line outside the studio,

4:31like standing in your kitchen and waiting for trout to appear and jump in your frying pan, the Swiss one that costs $400. But the fix here is simple. For every architect-laden event you attend, attend one containing zero architects. Join a group with a terrible logo. Eat more rubber chicken lunches. You don't have to become the clients. You just have to be findable in the wild. So when someone says, Know anybody? That dentist says you.

5:02U.S. Modernist Radio is underwritten by the Brent R. Harris Charitable Trust, restorer of Richard Neuter's Kauffman Desert House in Palm Springs, and six other houses in California. By the E. Faye Jones Conservancy, preserving the legacy of modernist architecture in northwest Arkansas. efayjonesconservancy.org. And by Diane Bald and the Budman family, restoring significant architecture in Toronto, Los Angeles, Malibu, and Palm Springs.

Conversation with Stephen Hall

5:27Our first two guests share a marriage and one of the most respected architecture practices in the world. Stephen Hall founded his firm in 1977 and has spent decades chasing light in his buildings. He's won the AIA Gold Medal and the Premium Imperiale, Japanese architecture's answer to the Nobel Prize. Dimitra Csakrylia joined his studio in 2008 and she rose to principal by 2022.

6:00She's now leading major projects, including a concert hall in Czech Republic and an expo center in Albania, all while teaching a course with Stephen on music and architecture. Here's George's conversation with Stephen Hall and Dimitra Csakrylia.

6:18Stephen, like Richard Meyer and Charlie Gwathmy, you pulled that move in the beginning of your career where you designed a house for your parents. Tell me about that one. Yeah, that's where I grew up on the side of Puget Sound in Manchester, Washington. And it was a real challenge to design a house for my mother. You know, she had incredibly specific ideas. So it was back and forth. I think I did about three or four different complete designs. And I kind of settled on the notion of an oyster.

6:52You know, the beach in front of Manchester is full of those oyster shells. And it's gray and sort of rough on the outside and white and smooth on the inside. So that this house is like in two squares and it's all in gray weathering cedar. But inside it's all white with rounded stairs that connect the vertical elements. So this kind of notion of making the house relate to the site, which later led to my, you know, manifesto.

7:22The first kind of book I wrote about architecture, Anchoring, that the building needs to relate to the site and circumstance and not be just kind of vocabulary that you carry on from one site to the next. I read that your parents' house at one point was for rent. Someone could have it for a week. Is that still the case? No, it's rented now. So it's still occupied. You know, it's been there for quite a number of years. But it's a functioning, still a functioning and great place to see the sunrise over Puget Sound.

7:55You can see Seattle in the distance. I bet you that's really gorgeous. We go back there every year to the cabin, which is next to it on the beach. So there's a kind of relationship with roots that come with this house. Now, this cabin that you mentioned, is that your Tower of Silence? No, this is just an existing 100-year-old wooden shack that's on the beach. That was the first building on the site. It's, in fact, few of them remain on the waterfront.

8:26And there used to be this passage on the waterfront. Right, there was a boardwalk connecting everything on the beach in Manchester. And these were little cabins that were built when the ferry connected Seattle to Manchester. It's amazing that they still exist. The tide comes all the way up to the front of this little cabin. And then it recedes about 100 feet or more. And it goes up and down over 14 feet twice a day. You know, it's a very special edge of Puget Sound. Now, the house I wanted to ask you about next is one that seems sort of a mystery to me.

9:01This was a house that you started a long time ago, I think around 2010, in Old Westbury. An enormous house, 18,000 square feet, never completed. What happened? The owner divorced his wife. So, I mean, that's, you know, none of those things happen in life. Yeah. It was like a village. And it's still there. Someone purchased it. And now they're finishing a restoration of it. So, it still has a light. Oh, it's coming back.

9:31Yes. Oh, that's wonderful. Because it looks like a fascinating house from the air. It has an interesting footprint. Right. No, it's like a small village. You know, it was an incredibly ambitious project. The client wanted, you know, exhibition spaces and, you know, it's something of a relic. And the third house I want to mention, really one of my favorites, is one you designed for David Shaw at Hastings-on-Hudson. Right. Really gorgeous. And, of course, built by the Pruning Group, which can build anything.

10:05The house and the guest house. Right. Yeah. Tell me about that house. That's a house which was inspired by a view across the Hudson River to the Palisades. And you can see the sort of striations of the Palisades that were cast in the concrete molds to make the tilt-up concrete walls. So, the house is kind of, again, a relationship to the site and the circumstance, kind of the edge of the Hudson River. At first, we were making it as a kind of, you know, a planar composition about the relation

10:41of ice breaking up on the Hudson River and how the different pieces of ice formed spatial entities. It's quite a large house. More than one-third of it is underground. And then we had the idea of connecting across to the Palisades. And that became this kind of planar construction that had this real relationship to the site and the edge of the Hudson River. It's all geothermally heated and cool with a green roof sort of built into the landscape.

11:12And there's a guest house also that's kind of a Swiss Army knife opening out onto the view of the Hudson River. It reminded me of some of those wonderful John Lautner homes in California that always end up being the villain's lair in movies. Yeah. No, Lautner was an amazing architect. I visited a few of his houses. It's incredible work. Now, Demetra, how did you and Stephen meet? I came to New York in 2008 to do my master's at Columbia University.

11:43And I was fortunate to have Stephen as my professor at the design studio. And as is the custom, oftentimes the good performing students, if there is work in the office, have a position in practice. So I was interviewed and entered the practice in 2008. And I have since run different institutional works, competitions, but also residential projects that I've been enjoying doing a lot.

12:13So what are some of the residential projects you've worked on? We finished the house for Mark McDonald in Hudson, New York, just last spring. And that's a beautiful project that sits in the urban context of Hudson with a new way of relating to that historic neighborhood. And it's shaped in an L in plan that kind of defines the courtyard. And it's a very open plan.

12:43Mark McDonald is a furniture collector, mid-century furniture specialist. And he uses the layout in a beautiful way where the furniture kind of rotates and circulates and changes. And it's open to the public. People can visit. He has open hours. He welcomes people into his home. That is unusual. Yes, it is. And everything in the composition is an L, you know, like that great Italian composer, Celsi, who only composed in a single pitch.

13:15So we took the idea of the plan that forms a small courtyard and then use that as a vocabulary introduction to all the elements of the house. So there's sort of L-shaped windows and awnings. And the whole house has a kind of musical condition that connects everything. Stephen, when you were graduating, you drove to San Francisco, I understand, and landed a job building models for landscape architect Lawrence Halperin, who's very well known.

13:47How was that experience? Well, that was a great moment in my life. When I graduated from the University of Washington, I kind of flipped a coin of whether to go north or south and came with the San Francisco. And I thought I was going to work for Charles Moore, Moore, Lyndon, and Turnbull. But they weren't hiring at the time. So at that moment, I had a chance to work for different architecture firms in San Francisco that were doing housing. But then I got a chance to work for Lawrence Halperin.

14:18And that was really a breakthrough moment in my life because, you know, this is a man who was making landscape from ideas. And I was very interested in all of his relationships to architecture and landscape. And you drove out there, I understand, in a beat-up Volkswagen Beetle, which, as far as I can tell, seemed to be the unofficial car of starving architects at the time. Yes. Right. The 1959 Volkswagen that made it all the way from Bermitton, Washington, to San Francisco.

14:48That's really cool. Now, what had you decide to open up your own office? Well, I tried opening an office in San Francisco. And then I got excited to come to New York, and I did a sort of excursion flight from San Francisco to New York on a 21-day excursion ticket. My brother was studying art at Columbia University. And New York was so exciting, I decided not to take the return half of the ticket and stayed in New York. And then gradually, through competitions and sort of exhibitions, I gradually got a foothold

15:25there. And I did apartment interiors at first, and then got a foothold and actually being able to start a practice. It was a great mullet in my life. And like Norman Jaffe, who we talked to his son in an earlier show, you slept in your office for a long time, just like Norman did. I slept on a plywood shelf in a department store on 6th Avenue. Right. It was a great beginning, you know, very dedicated. And that's when we did projects like Bridge of Houses, which was the first project to take

15:59the High Line and make it into a public promenade space. So that was the kind of beginning point of the High Line. I've seen the article on that. That was in GA Houses way back. Right. There's even a video on it now, I believe. Yeah, about the Bridge of Houses. You know, it was a project that was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art. It was a project that went on for a few years. In that process, I think the idea of saving the High Line and making it into a public promenade

16:30was kind of secured over those years. And then later, now we all know it's one of the greatest public spaces in New York. Now, the two of you maintain, I guess I would call it a little compound in Rhinebeck, New York. Right. That has a gallery. And what else? It's an archive with watercolors, all of our notebooks, the architectural library. It's adjacent to it. It's a beautiful, small experiment in a house that we call the Explorations of N, X of N in short.

17:04It's only 840 square feet, but it's designed in a very compact way within that clearing of the nature reserve. And it's a house that is designed as a loft space, volumetrically very interesting, starting from a geometrical exercise on intersecting spheres. And the movement and the experience of this volume inside, it's quite an attraction. We say you can sleep five people, but there is no bedrooms in the house.

17:37It's an open space, and there's privacy within that without the kind of standard understanding of a typical house layout. So how do you sleep? Do you just roll out a sleeping bag?

17:52No, there's kuton beds that you can sleep over the top of the sphere. The sofa is designed as a place to sleep. Yeah, it's a very open and experimental project. And the master bed is kind of tucked into the mezzanine upstairs. You don't even see it when you come into the house. It's just the way that the house is organized that provides these pockets of privacy without it being conceived as a room in the standard terms. That's very innovative.

18:23It's all geothermally heated and cooled, and it's occupying 28 acres of preserved natural landscape with a sculpture trail along the edges of the landscape. And that house is right adjacent to the archive and very, very close to our private residence. But it's also open on Airbnb, so people can come and visit it. We reserve it for the artists and the community that comes in here for the archive and the residents we have for the programming.

18:54But all the other days is available on Airbnb. So a lot of architecture enthusiasts have come to visit. You can see all of their houses at usmodernist.org slash H-O-L-L. The house on this list that I just want to visit just calls to me. Can you guess which one that is, Stephen? I'll give you a hint. It's in Washington, D.C. The residence. The Swiss Ambassadors residence. That looks really great.

19:26That was a competition. It was an interesting competition because they invited American architects with Swiss architects, and I was a design architect on that team with Justin Rusli from Lucerne, Switzerland. And we didn't expect to win the competition, but it was organized in a very spatial way connecting to the Washington Monument where this cruciform plan had a diagonal axis through the space connecting. And it was a beautiful moment when we won the competition and then we developed it.

20:01It was opening, I think, in 2006. Still quite a wonderful space for entertaining, and it's a great place in Washington, D.C. I had the pleasure of visiting the Finland Embassy a couple of years ago and was really struck by how much they used the building for public events, a lot of engagement, a lot of parties there, receptions, films, things like that. Is it the same way at the Swiss Embassy? Yes.

20:32The residence is upstairs, and the ground level is really all about public space. Okay. Opening out into the gardens, the courtyards, the four courtyards. It's a social condenser house for public events. It's very different than, say, U.S. embassies around the world, which are hardened fortresses. These embassies and residences seem to be much more interested in pulling in the citizens around them. Right. No, this is really about openness and about connectivity.

21:03Had that led to any actual embassy projects for you? Not really. I mean, it was a one-off competition. What are the two of you working on now that's going to be going up in 2027 and 2028? We're working on a house in New Canaan, Connecticut, about the compression of time. The original house is from 1733. And the new house really is about a modern extension and how you could explore time,

21:34you know, the way architecture has evolved in time between the two pieces. It's a small project and quite intense. In Hudson, very close to Rhinebeck, in fact, there is a property that's a real woodland of 90 acres. And the client wanted a house, an idea of a tree house, a building that rises vertically among these beautiful, enormous cedar trees that then kind of becomes this place to look out, the reference of the thousand plateaus.

22:08It looks out into this nature and the lake around it. Yeah, it's inspired by trees that branch vertically. It's leaning, in fact. It's quite a surprising interior there. We just broke ground. The excavation is complete. And that should be realized within the year. So you said one was in New Canaan and one was in Hudson? Near Hudson, New York, the town of Klaverak. It's very near Hudson, New York. Do you find that it's harder to adapt a modern design to, say, a 1733 house than it is to just design a house from scratch?

22:47No, I think my idea about complementary contrast is that a modern expansion gets its meaning when it's connected to something historic. Like our Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City, where the modern extension is like a relationship to the old, which I call the complementary contrast. And I think you can get that dimension, you know, it makes it actually more exciting and more modern and more respectful of the historic part.

23:20Stephen, I understand that you start each day with a watercolor at dawn, very zen-like with your beautiful property and your paints. Dimitra, how do you start your day? Well, we also have a very young family at this point with a 10-year-old and a 5-year-old. So I very much respect and try to protect Stephen's time with his watercolor while preparing the kids to go to school.

23:50So my time is later in the day when the kids are out of the house. Okay. I love doing my own little art projects and I love also spending time around our home. It has an incredible piece of landscape that has been cultivated over the past 30 years that Stephen has owned that house. And it's a pleasure to be around that body of water, in fact. The Round Lake is an incredible ecosystem on its own.

24:22Well, thank you both for being on the show. It's been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you. Thank you. That was George's conversation with Stephen Hall and Dimitra Cicillian.

Out There architecture across America

24:35Three of American architecture's most influential editorial voices are here together to talk about their new book, Out There, Architecture Across America. Robert Ivey led the AIA for a decade after editing Architectural Record. Kathleen McGuigan spent three decades at Newsweek. Before also serving as editor of Architectural Record. And Peter McKee, the recently retired dean of Arkansas' Fay Jones School of Architecture, spent a decade in Finland studying Alvar Aalto.

25:08Here's George. I am super happy to have pulled together the three Jedi Knights of Architecture here to talk about their book. It's called Out There. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, George. How did the three of you decide to do this, and when was that? It really began with an issue of Architectural Record, and many of us had worked together in one capacity or worked on the same publication, Architectural Record. In 2001, there was an issue called Out There, and it profiled work of architects who were outside, basically, of major metropolitan areas.

25:50We've always known that there is excellent work happening all over the country by a group of people who care about where they live, their communities. So that idea simmered for a long time, and ultimately, Peter McKee, Kathleen McGuigan, and I joined together, I'd say about two and a half years ago, in a series of conversations initially, first with Peter and I, and then Kathleen joined the group, and we talked to architects all over the country about work that's happening all over the country, and it became a book called Out There.

26:26I think it's a really shared interest and passion. Forgive the overused word passion, but it really is for all three of us. When I was architecture critic at Newsweek magazine, I did an article of the same theme that was about architects that were really a counterweight to the prevailing trends of postmodernism, deconstructivism, deconstructivism, and featured Lake Flato, Jim Cutler in Seattle, and Sam Mockby and Coleman Coker in Mississippi.

26:57So I was interested in that, and then when I took the reins from Robert at Architectural Record in 2011, we really looked for, as Robert had, and sought out a lot of these architects from outside, as Robert had called it, the centers of fashion. And then Peter will talk about his own work in this area and elevating the profile of the kind of architects who are in our book. Yeah, I think we're perhaps singing three-part harmony in a really wonderful way over a period of years now,

27:30and I have a long and productive history working with both Robert and Kathleen at Architectural Record while they were editors. But I suppose my own perspective is something of a Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside, in the sense that I spent a fair amount of time living outside the United States and really promoting the good architecture that exists in nations like Finland or Denmark or Ireland into the pages of architecture record.

28:02And at the same time, as I moved back to the United States, first to St. Louis and then laterally to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where I've been the dean of the Fay Jones School for 12 years, you really understand, have to understand almost by definition, the richness and vitality of architecture existing out here in the heartland, in small communities, in small towns, with really good architects, really good practices, terribly dedicated to their local communities. And George, to add on to that whole symphony here among the three people who are singing together,

28:40there's not a town in the United States, or it's difficult to find one, if you think about it. And you've devoted part of your now significant body of work to the towns across the country, where there's an excellent library by someone that may not be as well known today as someone in New York might be, or a school, or a house. Those architects are, quote, out there. And often they don't get their due in the media.

29:11And that's part of a situation that we're trying to correct. We're trying to let people know that the architects that they're dealing with in their home communities care about where they are and who they are and what their needs, desires, and culture needs to be. And they're trying to help and figure those things out. And they do it every day. And I don't know if you guys thought about this or not, but this book is also important because these architects that you're talking about, that are not famous, that are often, you know, kind of doing it for love in their communities.

29:44They're the ones whose buildings are going to be torn down first in 50 years. And we need to recognize them and protect them and keep them in people's memory. Yeah, I think that's an important perspective, George. And at the same time, I will say, having, along with Kathleen and Robert, we've all had our conversations with these good people who are doing this work. I'll quote one that, in fact, is something of a beacon for me where I asked one of our architects

30:15at one point, what do you hope to achieve by staying where you are, by building where you are, by not migrating elsewhere? And he looked at me and he said, my sole ambition is to build as many good buildings as I can and grow old and see them into a future. And basically, life passes on. Life passes forward. These people are rooted where they choose. They've made decisions, having left school, having worked sometimes in very well-known firms

30:49in major cities, and they move on and they go to North Carolina. They go to Colorado and they become members of those communities. They set down roots and get to know people. And it's a classic story. And they stay there. Sometimes they will find another town that beckons them to work in. But most often, these are people who are in singular places.

31:22I do think it's interesting that there are many architects who practice more or less where they have lived. But to Robert's point, there are an awful lot that just set out very deliberately to go to a very different part of the country, a very different climate, very different topography, and become inspired by that. Because most of the architects in this book, when you really consider the work we're including, their work is very inspired by the place they are and or the communities they live in.

31:54And I think that's really significant, how adaptable many of these architects are from perhaps where they got their architectural educations. They've made a big shift quite deliberately. The other thing I think is interesting, and it has to do with the future of buildings, is just as the adaptive reuse of older buildings has become a prevalent mode of practice for architects everywhere in this country, I think it amounts to almost half of architectural work these days.

32:28There are a number of projects in this book that are the same thing. They show what these firms can do when they are confronted with an old building to redo, adapt, or add on to, or even a street that has, in a kind of fading town that needs kind of a catalyst to reactivate it. And they might do it with contemporary architecture, or they might do it with redoing a piece of existing older architecture. I think it's worth saying, however, this is not second-tier work.

33:02This is first-rank work. Yeah. It's unrecognized work. And, George, it may stand the test of time. Some of these buildings and architects may slip up into greater visibility. I think some already are. But this work can be formally powerful at perhaps a smaller scale. This is worthy and worthwhile work, and that's part of the reason of doing the book in the first place. I would cite one other quality that was mentioned, at least in interviews that I conducted, more than once.

33:36And this is a word you rarely, rarely hear in the academy, and that is an attraction for the architects about where they might have moved, or something that animates them in their own work, and that's beauty. That's been a no-no word in critical writing for a long time. It's appearing, popping up every now and then today. But some of these, and I think you can see from the photographs, are in beautiful sights. Or the projects embrace a kind of, let's say, aesthetic pleasure that moves us, that we recognize.

34:14There's a story, Renee DelGaudio, who's a wonderful architect in Colorado, and her choice of where she wanted to practice. She was from the East Coast. She'd gone to the West Coast to school. She had chosen, however, to go to the University of Colorado for her education, her initial education. And she crested a hill going into Colorado and basically had an epiphany. She had a sort of awakening. And she literally has moved there and lived and built a life.

34:47And she builds looking at those magnificent Rocky Mountains. It was her own internal response to something powerful that led her to move, settle, and make a practice, make a life. There's a beauty that I think many of our participants have found in, you can call it a number of things, but let's call it resourcefulness. These are not necessarily projects of extraordinarily large budgets.

35:19In fact, there are projects of real pressured conditions. And that, in fact, compels design to be that much more in the forefront. And if there's any quality that we could perhaps identify beyond beauty across the 50 practices, it's a resourcefulness in which a practice is seeking to employ what I'll often say is an economy of means to achieve a maximum of meaning. And it's a really, really hard thing to do day in and day out.

35:53But there is a beauty to that, as much ethical beauty, as much as an aesthetic beauty. And I would add that, you know, to some extent, these architects working locally are sometimes using materials and often using materials that access locally. That's kind of what Peter meant in part, the resourcefulness. And even in terms of craft, I mean, there's a wonderful young firm in Tucson, Arizona called Dust, and they're really trying to keep alive the craft of rammed earth, for example, in some of their projects.

36:27And, you know, finding people who can still do certain kinds of construction work that perhaps were prevalent in that area. So I think that's really an interesting aspect of some of the work that we are looking at, is what makes sense for these architects to build with in the places they are working. This is a book, really, of hometown heroes who do extraordinary work, just like hundreds of thousands of other architects back over the last hundred years have been doing.

37:00I love in your book, Marlon Blackwell does the introduction, and he's comparing the projects in it to like peaches growing on a sweet potato vine. I love that a lot. We've come up with some more. I want to run these by you, see what your favorite is. Um, like a Mies van der Rohe bouncy castle, like a Bauhaus dollar general, like a Farnsworth house on cinder blocks, like Steven Spielberg shooting a wedding video, like a Frank Lloyd Wright furniture in a McDonald's, like a Corbusier sketch on a Denny's napkin, like the Villa Savoie at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, and finally, like Tom Kundig with a buzz cut.

37:47You can steal all those. Thank you. Are you the author of all of those, George? I'm afraid so.

37:56You might be the only one of the three of us who still goes to Denny's, but hey, don't put that in this podcast.

38:03Denny's has high value for the calorie count. The AARP discount, guys, come on. Indeed.

38:15George, one thing to think about is one of the progenitors, one of the precedents here, of course, is Fay Jones. This is an alliance for Robert and myself in many ways. It's certainly, I know, for Kathleen, an empathetic understanding, too. And, you know, when Thorncrown Chapel was built, no one would have predicted that it would have become the phenomena that it has become and that it would stand the test of time and, in fact, become this pilgrimage for not just architects, but for so many people who venture into that corner of Northwest architecture.

38:51Mere mortals, like me, yes. Indeed. So this is where I think, you know, Kathleen in her essay basically sets out the importance of these precedents. Robert does as well. I'm certainly living this here in Northwest Arkansas and feel a deep responsibility to that work. And I think that's important for the public to grasp is that sometimes the simplest, least pretentious, least publicized, most out-of-the-way structures can really have this superior value in people's lives and take on this immense importance for decades.

39:29And Thorncrown Chapel will stand the test of time. I think in some ways that's what all of our architects are, in a way, at least aspiring to. I would add one thing to that because we're heavy on aesthetics here and the way things look and the way they move us, and those are all true. But a major area in the book that we found in almost every case is this community connection and this commitment to community. It involves a certain kind of caring, even empathetic approach by architects to the places and the people where they live.

40:05And Roy Decker and Anne-Marie Duval Decker, I really embodied that in Jackson, Mississippi. Kathleen, why don't you tell them a little bit about their work? Well, I think their work is so important for the reasons Robert is saying. I mean, I went to a senior center that they designed that was so wonderful and non-institutional and kind of divided up into volumes and sort of on a little sort of creek and pond. And the detailing of their architectures is exceptional.

40:39Roy gives Anne-Marie credit for that. But, I mean, this is beautifully, beautifully done work. And it isn't always captured in photographs to the extent of its excellence, but they really do a marvelous job. And also they did a great piece for a town near where Peter lives in Springdale, Arkansas. They did a whole civic center that put all of the functions of a town that's kind of growing in one complex. It's just beautifully done. I mean, the kind of building that would make a town proud to have such excellent, terrific contemporary architecture.

41:16So they're really important. And it's very gratifying to us that we had written about them, put them in the book. And then this year they got the firm of the year from the AIA. And I'd also like to point out, just to piggyback for a minute on Faye Jones, I mean, I consider myself a journalist primarily. And one of the things that makes us feel this book is so relevant and we like to think a bit ahead of the curve is when we realize that with the exception of Faye Jones winning the AIA gold medal decades ago,

41:47in the last five years, I think I'm right, three of the gold medal winners have all been architects who we would consider sort of the advance guard of the architects in this book. That would be that the AIA has been recognizing this kind of locally significant architecture by honoring Marlon Blackwell, Brooke Scarpa, and Lake Flato. So this is really significant. I think the profession and the institutionalization of the profession is recognizing what this book is pointing out and is, we hope, elevating the idea of this kind of architect and the values espoused in the book.

42:29In the 1960s and 70s, there were a number of instances of very brave individuals, all not architects, who would seek to create some kind of incredibly unique building on their own. Normally it's a house, occasionally it was something else. Did you run across any of these heretics in the course of doing the book, the non-architects doing some interesting project? Yes, there's this unwritten history or unacknowledged history of those who call them citizen practitioners, perhaps, who were, of course, very much advocating resourcefulness.

43:10We're advocating what we now too easily label sustainably principled design. We're certainly addressing environmentally principled design or oriented design. It's all there. And what's, I think, been fascinating for us is to see how those ideas, in a way, percolate upwards, if we can use that metaphor, into professional practice altogether and begin to inform the choices that architects are making today. There's a certain circularity. All of this seems to now be back in currency for a variety of reasons, and importantly so.

43:46In the movie Men in Black, a part of the plot is they find out where the aliens are because they look at the National Enquirer and read the stories. So I get my lead on these individuals that are doing interesting projects by watching the last segment of TV news. You know that kind of pleasant one that they tell you things after the war stories and the politics stories? They're always profiling somebody who's doing some interesting structure in the community.

44:17And that's in every market, really, now. You see stories about these people doing those. And that's another whole level of out there. Well, the reality is that we just touched the tip of the iceberg here. This is 50 practices. It's not one in every state. Some states have multiple practitioners or projects shown. But it probably could double the number that we seriously looked at and had to narrow this down to 50. And 50 is a lot to make a publication.

44:48We have a 500-page book here with 170 projects in it. However, we saw an awful lot of really good work that easily should have been in here. Could we have? And we can see another generation, another point of view, other aspects leading into this same kind of thinking. And we think that, you know, let's just say that the project has legs. It's the kind of thing that we could continue to do in various forms or formats online or in print.

45:22As we continue to turn over leaves of new information and go to that final segment on the news or just literally meet and encounter and appreciate the work of people who are doing this work all over the country. And to Peter's point, actually, it's you can look at it internationally. You can think about this outside the United States. Yes, I can see an out there, too. I can see out there the musical. I can see out there on ice. I mean, this has so many ways you could go.

45:53Out there the television series. Yes.

45:57You'll wait for Netflix to contact us. Yes, exactly. I think this idea of vernacular architecture is significant. I mean, we know that it's sort of the roots of a lot of what grows up into the kind of architecture that we're publishing in the book. But I do think it's important to note that it's not a copying of a kind of local vernacular really is making a putting a twist on it. And I think Marlon Blackwell, again, says it well in the book.

46:28It's re-presenting, not representing what's there. It's re-presenting, and you can certainly see that in his work and the work of the architects in this book. They're really doing something that looks contemporary. It's not the idea that you would have a Cape Cod house on Cape Cod. It's really that you would take an idea and connect it to the place in a unique and innovative way. And part of what you see, I think, in aggregate when you leaf through the book, George, is view of contemporary culture in the year 2026.

47:06This is a reading of the zeitgeist, if you will, from a certain perspective about what people's hopes, expectations, cultural expectations, and ideas are. And they're embodied in this work because that's what these people that were working with them produced. We know that there, as Kathleen said, there's a tremendous amount of work in preservation, in restoration, even in traditional and neoclassical work. But that's not what this is about.

47:36This is about who are we now, as seen through the eyes of these people who are living across the country in these different communities. And what does that add up to? In part, it's a visual answer. In part, it's a programmatic answer. In part, it's taking all the values that were mentioned and espoused and hoped for. It's a realization, a distillation, if you will, of who we are right now.

48:09And in that sense, it's really hopeful. Despite all the gloom and doom that we are currently experiencing, there is real hope here. The book is Out There. Kathleen, Peter, Bob, thanks so much for joining me. Thank you, George. Thank you, George. It's a pleasure. That was George's conversation with the authors of Out There, Robert Ivey, Kathleen McGuigan, and Peter McKeith. One of our favorite musical guests is back.

Musical guest Haley Loren

48:41The swoon-worthy Haley Loren. Hi, Haley. Hi. How are you? We're always swooning over you. Oh, I can feel the swoon all the way from over here. You've got a new album out. It's called A Kind of Wilderness, and we're going to play two songs from that today. The first one is really interesting. It's called On a Clear Day. This is from a movie that premiered in the 60s called On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. I actually attended the opening of that movie and found the plot to be entirely confusing.

49:17This classic Barbra Streisand film follows Daisy Gamble. How old were you, George? Not that old. That's why it was confusing, but it's still confusing to read it today. Just checking. Daisy Gamble, a kooky New York college student who undergoes hypnosis to cure her smoking addiction. During her trance, her psychiatrist, Dr. Mark Ruckner, played by the suave Yves Montand, discovers she has a past life as Lady Melinda Winifred Wayne Tentries,

49:47a confident and scandalous 19th century English aristocrat. Dr. Bruckner, violating all rules of professionalism, falls in love with her personality, causing a cascade of romantic and ethical complications when Daisy realizes he is drawn to her past life as Melinda rather than who she is as Daisy. So, no wonder you were confused. Yeah, I mean, but the songs from the movie and the play before that are really wonderful.

50:23And we'll hear this first one. Here's Haley with On A Clear Day. On a clear day, rise and look around you.

50:54On a clear day, how it will astound you that the glow of your being outshines every star. You'll feel part of every mountain, sea and shore.

51:32You can hear from far and near, a world you never heard before. And on that clear day, on that clear day, you can see forever, you can see forevermore. You're ensemble.

52:04Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Come look around. Hmm. Thank you.

52:44Thank you.

53:14On a clear day, how it will astound you. That the glow of your being outshines every star you feel part of. Every mountain, sea and shore you can hear from far and near.

53:47A world you never heard before and on a clear day, on that clear day. You can see forever, you can see forever. You can see forevermore.

54:22Forevermore.

54:36Haley, I see in your bio that you grew up in Sitka, Alaska. How was that? I don't think most people in the lower 48 understand what growing up in Alaska is all about, except when we see shows on cable TV. Right. I mean, for me, I have to just say it was normal because that was my childhood. But it is quite a different upbringing than people in the lower 48. As you said, you know, you're an insider, you know, the lower 48. Yeah. So that's what we called the mainland, the U.S., essentially.

55:10But I was not only in Alaska, which is its own kind of experience, but I was in an island community. So I was on an island with 8,000 other people, 14 miles of road, Baranoff Island, Sitka, Alaska. And it's beautiful. It's sandwiched between the ocean with, you know, all of the southeast islands scattered all around it. Yeah, it's southern Alaska, really. And the mountains. Yeah, it's really fantastic. It looks like a fantasy world in some ways, just looking at it from the outside.

55:45But I was very much a free range child in Sitka and playing outside and always in nature, always chomping through the woods, going down to the beach to run along and look at all the tide pools and sometimes unsuccessfully trying to fish from the shore. Those are my my afternoons after school and in the summer. And, you know, in the winter, it was a very long, dark winter with lots and lots of rain. And it rains like 320 days of the year there.

56:16So I was always damp and always having a lot of fun outside. I was making music from an early age. I've always loved singing. So that was sort of my inside activity. And also, I was a competitive swimmer. So I did that before and after school. It was a very, in my mind, of course, normal childhood. But the setting and the fact that it was in so much isolation, considering that it's an island where you have to either take a ferry or a boat or a plane to go anywhere else outside those 14 miles of road makes it a little unusual, I think, for a lot of people to envision what that might have been like.

56:55It was... Where did you go after high school? Well, I didn't actually go to high school in Sitka. We moved when I was in eighth grade. We moved to Oregon, where I finished up my school in Eugene, actually, where I now live again. And right after high school, as soon as I graduated, I moved to Nashville, Tennessee for a couple of years to do a lot of songwriting with a lot of incredible people. But yeah, I was already on a very musical path by the time I even reached Oregon. And then after that, I started doing so many shows, I became professional by age 14.

57:29And the rest is history, as they say. There's a lot of context in between, of course, but... So many wonderful albums, and you've released them also in Japan and other parts of Asia. Yeah, I've released 11 albums to date worldwide. And then this will be my 12th. This fall, do you have any tour dates set up where people can see you? I do. I have an evolving calendar. My website, hayleyloren.com, always has my tour dates. And I also have a mailing list of people, you know, sign up for that.

58:00They find out. Or on my social media, you know, there's so many places to find out information now. There are. It's hard to keep track. It's wild. It's hard to keep up sometimes with supplying the information to all these places, too, as an independent artist. You know? Yeah, you'd think if everybody knows everything, you don't have to tell everybody everything. They'll tell each other. But that's how fake news happens. Yeah. I heard that she's playing Woodstock. Yeah. Yeah. And Woodstock's coming back. Yeah. That's it. Yeah, I've definitely been on the other end of that phenomenon where I'm supposedly playing a show somewhere.

58:35And nope, I am definitely not. But it's somehow gotten out there or, you know, it's a weird world these days when it comes to promoting things. Yeah, but your music is lovely. Thank you so much. Haley, we've had several guests who have been spoofed by AI that are using their voice and tone to create new tunes. Has that happened to you yet? I honestly don't know. I haven't gone down that rabbit hole yet.

59:06Usually, artists don't know until they go looking. I've been seeing more and more stories about that, though. And so I definitely would like to look into that, but I'm also a little scared to. Yeah.

59:21Because it's definitely not something that most artists that I know, of course, unless they consent, like to see happening. It's definitely a bit of a can of worms, that one. It's a big ripoff there. Absolutely. Yeah. Tell me about this next song, From the Bottom of the Ocean. Oh, okay. Well, I wrote that one. I wrote it kind of in the height of my pandemic blues when I was feeling down in the dumps about everything after about a year and a half or a year of having all my shows get canceled.

59:57And kind of all just the world was so topsy-turvy and people were increasingly at each other's throats and just everything just felt so murky and strange. And so this song really came out of a place of just trying to be honest with myself. That's how a lot of my songs emerge. It's sort of me trying to work out how I'm feeling about something and maybe try to find my way out of it. And that's what this song really did for me. Of course, it didn't cure all my blues, but it definitely helped me express something that I felt was really tangible for me at that time.

1:00:27So it was therapeutic. Yeah, it was therapeutic. And it ends on a hopeful note about like, hey, you know, things might not fully change, but I can. My vantage point can change. And that is really all that I'm experiencing. So maybe there's a little hope yet for finding the light again. We can always change our point of view.

1:00:49Yeah, exactly. And I love how in the studio when I was working with these fine musicians in Montreal, yet again, just like a... I did for the Dreams Lost and Found album. We turned it into something completely out of left field from how I had sort of begun the song. As far as instrumentation and feel, it started to feel a little bit more like... There's something very swaggery about the representation on the album. And I love that. It kind of feels like I was in my Tom Waits era for a second.

1:01:21Did you have the hat? I did not. I had no hat. That was what was missing. Yeah. It feels a little unhinged, which actually maybe is more reflective of how I was truly feeling than even my original demo.

1:01:37I like it a lot. Here's Haley with From the Bottom of the Ocean. From the Bottom of the Ocean There is no place to go but up

1:02:12And I'm moving in slow motion Might as well be an astronaut stuck in space A million miles from your face From the bottom of the ocean The only color is blue for miles

1:02:44If I could feel all this emotion I could tell you why I haven't smiled in days Frozen under the waves Waiting for the world above to change I come up when I'm good and ready

1:03:21When my mind is steady When I've started shedding this weight upon my chest I keep waiting on my head alarm I'm going to show up

1:03:42It's a goodnight Just like an officer Please hold on And see how we could move To explain a little buttons Without silence Help 14 Get that Can you ask for a help? How do we do Even when 1 of the oc It felt like From the bottom of the ocean

1:04:15I start to notice how small it all is And I recall your crazy notion That in the end all that matters is the parade The celebration we make Knowing that the world may never change

1:04:46Clouding on together anyway Knowing that the world may never change Haley, this has been such fun. Thank you so much for coming back on the show.

1:05:16It's always a pleasure to have you. And we can't wait to see what you're going to be coming out with next. Thank you so much. I so appreciate you having me on. It's great to talk with you always. And thanks for getting the word out about my A Kind of Wilderness album out September 4th. So excited. Thanks for listening. U.S. Modernist Radio is underwritten by the Brent R. Harris Charitable Trust, restorer of Richard Neutra's Kauffman Desert House in Palm Springs, and six other houses in California. By the Ife Jones Conservancy,

1:05:48preserving 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. Visit usmodernist.org's massive archives to listen to past shows, discover documentation of 25,000 significant modernist houses, and access 5 million pages of classic 20th century architecture magazines. U.S. Modernist Radio is produced by Soundtracks Recording Studios in Raleigh, North Carolina.

1:06:19Our theme song was performed by George Smart and Robinson Earle, with guest research by Bobby Morris. Got a guest to suggest for the show? Write her 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. I'm Tom Guild. George and I'll be back soon with another rubber chicken breakfast edition of U.S. Modernist Radio. Yum.

1:06:49You