#474/Herb Greene with Lila Cohen + AIANY's Jesse Lazar + Futurama: Monica Penick + Musical Guest Harin W

Welcome to U.S. Modernist Radio

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

0:39I'm Tom Geild. On today's show, we welcome a giant in the field of organic architecture, Herb Green, along with his great niece, Lila Cohen. She's making a long-awaited documentary about his life and work. Then it's Jesse Lazar, executive director of AIA New York, one of the largest and most active chapters in the country. Monica Pennick talks about Futurama, the exciting exhibitions of which modernism was a part, that transcended the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs all the way to Disney's Epcot.

1:12And closing us out, our musical guest is Heron W., who uses AI to create the sound of vintage atomic-era lounge music. And now here is your host of the same atomic vintage but free of AI, Mr. Modernism, George Smart.

The danger of empty mid-century houses

1:29Hey, thanks, Tom. Here's a story I hear all the time from across America because the facts are basically the same. Walt and Doris bought their 1961 modernist house in 1971, and everyone said it would be impossible to heat. Everyone was right, but they stayed 50 years anyway because the huge living room windows looked onto a beautiful valley, and they loved it. Their kids loved it. Their grandchildren loved it. Especially the zip line Walt installed in the 1970s that no helicopter parent would even consider today.

2:04Then Walt died. Six months later, Doris' health and mobility declined, and she moved in with daughter Karen two hours away. You may have heard of Karen. She complains a lot. The family arrived at a plan. Karen would drop by the house every so often and take care of any problems. But nobody defined drop by. What happened? The house, a 3,400-square-foot machine for letting the outdoors in, was now supervised on roughly the schedule of a dental cleaning twice a year.

2:37The first week, the first thing Karen decided not to do was touch the refrigerator. Mom might come back, said Karen's brother Rick, who lives in Phoenix and had not seen Mom or Karen since the funeral. Doris was 87, on oxygen, and said out loud she was never going back. But the family heard this as, let's keep the yogurt. So the yogurt stayed. So did the half gallon of milk, leftovers, and a freezer full of Walt's bass, all of which waited loyally through a year of record heat and cold until the breaker broke,

3:11and nobody was there to notice. Karen dropped by one August and later told Mom that the kitchen, quote, needed airing out, which is like saying the Titanic needs a towel, and that wasn't cheap to fix or clean. Meanwhile, the house did what empty modern houses do, which is deteriorate quickly. Water came in. A squirrel set up house with his extended family. Something or someone broke a window. The water-damaged ceiling fell in on the built-in sofa that Walt had refused to reupholster since 1988,

3:44thereby settling that long-standing argument. A gutter let go and rerouted water to the crawlspace, unvisited since the Clinton years. Nobody turned off the water, so a supply line did it for them from inside a wall over a weekend in a month that Karen couldn't get away. That was truly expensive to fix, and so avoidable. A house sitter, a weekly walkthrough, a shut-off valve, a neighbor with a key. Each option was discussed, then deferred for, and I quote,

4:16when things settle down, end quote, a date that does not exist. For anyone inheriting the keys to a mid-century house, empty is not a neutral state. Empty is a verb, and it works nights. So put a human in the house. Let them live there rent-free as your eyes and ears. And please, throw out the yogurt. Mom is not coming back for it. She told you, and you wouldn't listen. U.S. Modernist Radio is underwritten by the Brent R. Harris Charitable Trust,

4:47restorer of Richard Neutra's Kauffman Desert House in Palm Springs, and six other houses in California. By the E. Fay Jones Conservancy, preserving the legacy of modernist architecture in Northwest Arkansas, efajonesconservancy.org. And by Diane Bald and the Budman Family, restoring significant architecture in Toronto, Los Angeles, Malibu, and Palm Springs.

Herb Green and organic architecture

5:11Herb Green was born in New York in 1929, nearly a century ago, and left Syracuse University to study under Bruce Goff at the University of Oklahoma. That training led to stints working for John Lautner in Los Angeles, and eventually his own practice. Herb's 1961 Prairie House in Norman, Oklahoma, predated the Green Building Movement by a decade, and made the pages of Life and Look magazines with photographs by Julius Schulman.

5:41Herb Green went on to teach at Oklahoma and the University of Kentucky for 18 years, all while building a parallel six-decade career as a visual artist. His great niece, Lila Cohen, is an architect in the Bay Area, and is now directing a documentary on his life, Remembering the Future with Herb Green. This is after they collaborated on a book in 2015 called Generations. Here's George's conversation with Herb Green and Lila Cohen. Herb, I want to start off by saying that I really appreciate your doing this interview.

6:15I know that you're a young man with a very bright future, so taking this opportunity to speak with us in your busy schedule is really wonderful. Thank you. I'm 96 and a half. I'm fortunate to be able to speak to you if it makes any sense. Now, you were born in 1929 in New York, and I understand that somewhere around 12, you read an article about Frank Lloyd Wright, and that turned on the light bulb for you. Do you remember what that article was about, what inspired you?

6:48No, I don't. What I do remember is I lived in a small town of Oneonta, New York, upstate New York, about 10,000 people, and it was called City of the Hills. I liked it. It had hills, and we lived in a big house at the ground floor. The upstairs was rented out, but 30 feet up from the road, and there was a long crust of rocks that we called the table rocks. And as a kid and a teenager, I used to go up there and play a lot. How did you get inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright?

7:21Before I even went to college, I used to get the New York Times, and I remember seeing something about him. And then when I was at Syracuse, I got in university. I went down to the library and found a picture of Wright and Falling War, and I enthusiastically rushed up to my professor and said, look at this, look at this. He said, oh, no, no, we don't look at that. That's no good. We look at other things. And I thought he was crazy. And then I wrote a small article about Goff, and I hitchhiked up to Cleveland where I found a friend who was a driver, and we drove to Norman.

7:51And so I met Goff. That changed my life. He had a 20, 25-minute conversation, and not just about architecture, but about everything, nature, people. And I remember coming out from that, and I said, gee, I met my first genius, and he was. Goff was gentle, kind. Couldn't lose long words, but his intensity in his eyes. I think I had nine buildings in my career. Goff did 154, and he was so patient. And that's where I learned that when you did your architecture,

8:23you were supposed to express the client's need. You worked for him for a couple of years, right? Yeah. After I graduated, I remember doing about 10 renderings for him about once every six months. I didn't charge him, but he was a wonderful, positive influence on my life. Now, next, you went to work for another great master, John Lautner, in Los Angeles. Yeah. How was that? I can't remember how we met. I knew of him. I didn't really work for him,

8:54but he had a garage over his office, which was just two desks. And he had a wife who decided, you know, like my name heard, but she called me Lef, L-E-F. The great thing about Lautner was on the weekends, he had a pickup truck, and he had another student, Alvin Wiley, I think. And he drove us all over Los Angeles, the hills, the beaches, some of his work. So that was one of the best experiences of my life. Did you work on designing some of the houses from that period for Lautner?

9:24No, I didn't touch a pencil. I wasn't only there for a couple of months. Okay. I think he was in a period where he didn't have much work. He was mostly dealing with problems at the city. Ah, okay. But he sold me his work, and some of it was genius. He was one of the rights of his own apprentices. And then next, you went to Houston? Went to Houston. I don't know why, just by chance, after I graduated, I just went there with a little money I had, and I got a job. I hadn't done the Prairie House,

9:55but I met Mary Agnes Morrison. She's a very beautiful redhead. We got married when I was 25 years old. And you worked for Joe Krakauer in Houston. Yeah, Joe got me. I did several jobs for Joe Krakauer. He was a very nice, intelligent, small man. And he got me a house, I love his house, which is a large house, with this outdoor swimming pool. Well, you're talking about Kentucky right now, but in Houston, you worked on other projects

10:25that were local for Houston, like the Southwest Bell Building. Yeah, he got me that. And you worked as a designer there with Joe Krakauer. Right. And then in 1957, you went back to Oklahoma. Yeah, I wanted to get my degree there. Well, this is when you went back. So you were in Houston, you got married. Got married. Changed your name. Yeah. My name was Greenberg. I was Jewish, proud of it, but there was so much anti-Semitism. I didn't want my wife,

10:57Mary, or myself to put up with it. So I legally changed my name from Greenberg to Green. And in about 56, Goff had been, was forced to resign. Yes. And that's when you went to go teach. He wasn't forced. The President Cross wanted him to stay very much, but he decided not to stay. And what I remember was that some confederate didn't like Goff because Goff interfered with his building on certain lots. So he had Goff touch

11:27a hand of a teenager on his shoulder. He put a Goff's hand on his shoulder. He had a photograph taken of that. And they published his sexual Misconduct. Misconduct. The President Cross at the university didn't want Doc to leave, but he left. And his work declined after that. And he died at 78. But you went to teach at OU right when he resigned. Yeah, I taught there for six years and did the Prairie House. But I wanted to go somewhere else,

11:59different region, different climate, different population. And I went to Washington, Kentucky. I was there for 18 years. I didn't like it much there, but I did see. That's a long time to stay where you didn't like it. Yeah, well, it wasn't that bad. But as I say, my purpose is to go to a different place, different climate, landscape, region, population. I was terribly interested in history. So I thought they would find out about a place like that and learning about it would give me the information and tools

12:29I wanted to do architecture. Well, let's go back to the Prairie House. That was 1961. Yeah. And you were the architect and the client. This was for your family. Yeah. About a lot, two acres, about five miles east of Norman. And I found a builder, a contractor, and his son. He built a house. He was very, very good, very patient, very skilled. I tried to get, I didn't, at that age, I didn't know how to get him money,

12:59but he built it anyway. Now, how did you get Julius Schulman to come out and photograph it? He was a mile away taking pictures of the Gulf Spiral House, the Bavinger House, sort of a wooded area. And the Prairie House was built, and it had no trees, no wood around it. And the student said, yeah, I'll go over and see Herb's house. So he went over and took some photographs and they were published in Life Magazine the next week. And the Prairie House had no intention of wanting to become famous.

13:31I didn't think of that in the slightest. I just did it with my goth influence and my own ideas. And I was sort of amazed when the house got such a buzzer published all over the world. In this day and age, it would be called viral. Herb, you would have gone viral today. Yeah, that's right. Well, I don't have much ego. I mean, I guess I was pleased, but I didn't feel like it made me feel superior to anything at all like that. Did the house start getting fans? Did people start making pilgrimages to come see the Prairie House?

14:01The way they did, I remember I was still living on a Saturday morning. We'd open it up to the public from 10 to 11 in the morning. And I remember witnessing four or five middle-aged women coming down after seeing the interior come down with tears in their eyes, which I thought was very moving. What struck them so much emotionally? What do you think? I'm not so sure, except they had senior shingles unstained inside and had a certain rhythm I could do. I remember students helped me

14:31do the interior. They didn't charge anything, so we'd work together to put the interior shingles up. The walls sloped a little, but I had paintings on and they were fixed so they wouldn't have to dangle. They stuck to the wall. But it's emotional being inside. Well, it was. I remember Bruce Goff, who was in there once, I can't remember the exact remark, but I interpreted this being, it was a work of architecture for the class. He said it was pure feeling.

15:02Pure feeling. And because it's so warm. That's what he said. Yeah, it's so warm in there and the smell is permeating cedar. And then you've got all this texture and shadow and... Well, the rug was bright, dark wood. It's my wife. I built the house and I was married because she had very strong red hair. So I made the carpet influenced by her daughter. Yeah. You left for Kentucky about 1964. Was it hard

15:32to leave this house behind? I don't remember feeling hard. I had these intellectual ambitions to go to a different place, different region. And I'd leave the house all the way if possible, the region. And who bought the house from you? What happened to it next? I don't know. Somebody lived in it for a library all the time. Some woman. I can't remember. Have you known Lila? Yeah. Janie Wilson lived in it for about 50 years. Wow. Really? 50 years? Yeah. Wow. She must have been pretty old when she died.

16:03Yeah. Yeah, she was. I mean, that was 2016 when the house kind of became sort of open again to the world because she really was very private. What is the condition of the house now, Lila? Well, the Prairie House has had better days because at this point it's 65 years old. Remarkably, the interior is in beautiful condition and has held up very well. The exterior being all clad wood

16:34has deteriorated significantly and that deterioration is getting faster and faster. It's sort of deteriorating at a faster rate over time. So we're wanting to figure out how to save it. It's very expensive because the wood siding was hand-cut and shaped on most of the boards and to duplicate that would cost a whole lot of money. Yeah, it does. But, you know, I think like any work of art, which, you know, is what the Prairie House is, it's a sculpture

17:04sitting on the prairie that reflects the prairie or at least the prairie that once was and like any work of art that requires restoration, it does take a lot of dedication and resources. At the same time I did the Prairie House, I did a Joyce House in Snyder, Oklahoma. Snyder was a granite quarry and the Joyce's owned a granite quarry. So I got to do their house on down the site and they had a lot of antique

17:35windows and furniture and I incorporated all that into the house and the floor was all granite. That's a, I thought, a very interesting house. It didn't get as much public attention as it should have. Well, you know, it's interesting that those houses were done exactly at the same time. You know, you've always said that to me for decades. They were done at the same time and it took a long time for it to dawn on me how significant that fact is because they're such

18:05different looking houses and it just really speaks to how you design which is very particular to the conditions of the site and the client. And who owns the house now? Well, it's owned by a non-profit trust that's trying to restore it. What's the name of the trust so people can look that up and maybe help them out? The Prairie House is owned by the Prairie House Trust and it's managed and sustained by the Prairie House

18:36Preservation Society and that is a non-profit that's protecting the house and working toward restoring it to its former glory. Is the house visitable? Do you ever have open days where people can see all or part of it? Yeah, the Prairie House has become open to the public again since it was purchased by this non-profit organization that I've been a part of kind of from its inception and that involves being able

19:07to hold public tours. We're working toward having a concert series and in the near future we'll be launching a capital campaign that reflects a master plan that we just finished for what the Prairie House and its site will become. We also have a sketch program right now and that sketch program was really wonderful to launch. I was actually in Oklahoma just last week and a group

19:39of people have signed up to do a six location sketching class. The six locations are three herb green buildings and three Bruce Goff buildings and the Prairie House was the first building on the list so I went there to help sort of launch that program and people are able to appreciate these buildings on a very intimate level. It's very different when you draw or paint or sketch something in person than taking just a photograph.

20:10So I really loved seeing these people of all different ages come and observe the house draw it really study it and sort of feel what the original intention of the design was. It was very moving to experience that. I never did any architecture build anything after I was 51 years old when I was weak at it starting a firm of my own or joining a firm and married to a woman named Nanine

20:40Hellyer she was eight years older than I was but she had money and what I did was a cook and I learned to be quite a good cook I started doing my collage paintings I'm no Picasso that kind of genius at all but I was very influenced by the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead who wrote a book called Process and Reality which is a huge influence on my attitude and work Whitehead wrote not just about science and philosophy but aesthetics Yeah well those paintings

21:11that you were able to really focus on when you stopped working in architecture very young at 51 those paintings were something that you had been doing for a long time I mean in the Prairie House you have there are photographs that Schulman took with your collage paintings in there so you were able to kind of continue that exercise but you you've always been having this dialogue between human experience history the process

21:43that our minds go through when we see something you've always been exercising that in architecture and in paintings yeah well Aunt Frank her photograph of me she was 13 was taken in an automatic photo booth but they were enlarged for the cover of Life magazine and I had at least four of those pictures from Life magazine I used them on my collage paintings this was influenced by Whitehead where you're taking an event like the Aunt Frank and then in the background

22:13you work around and try to make forms and colors that seem like they support her people were just enthralled by the photograph of it like the Aunt Frank they go up there and look at it very closely and talk and talk and talk and talk Lila you've been working on a documentary about Herb when did you start working on that well let's see I started working on capturing the history and background that Uncle Herb you know has in his you know

22:43that his life brings and I started working on the documentation of that almost five years ago and now here we are five years later and the project got a lot bigger than intended it's going to be called remembering the future with Herb Green it's going to be a film have you done all the photography or is there still more of that to go most of the cinematography has been completed for what became a feature length doc I was just in Oklahoma and also

23:14had the chance to do some pickups you know it feels like just like a building you're never fully done and there's always more that you need to do so but yeah we're getting extremely close we're going to have an in-progress screening at Taliesin West which is super exciting that's coming up April 18th and we're looking to be completed full fully completed by the end of August to start getting out into the world it's not cheap to do a documentary

23:45you're still wanting to raise some money to support the development of this where can people contribute to this effort yeah we're still very much in need of support and for anyone that's interested in supporting the project they can go to curbgreenfilm.com and contribute through a link that's there and it goes to our fiscal sponsor so it is a tax deductible donation

24:16so remember it's Herb Green with an e g-r-e-e-n-e that's right Herb thank you so much for talking with me this has been really wonderful and I can't wait to see the film thanks George it was great to talk with you yeah very interesting for me thank you that was George with Herb Green and his great niece Lila Cohen

Inside AIA New York

24:38Jesse Lazar liked architecture but didn't want to be an architect so he went to business school instead and ended up running the premier AIA chapter in America AIA New York as executive director of both AIA New York and the Center for Architecture his team puts on programs for architects and the public from their amazing building in New York City Jesse I think one of the questions many people have who look at your organizations

25:09is what is the difference between AIA New York and the Center for Architecture particularly since you're in the same place this is a very old question since the Center for Architecture first opened in 2003 so technically the AIA New York and the Center for Architecture are independent of one another the AIA New York is the largest and oldest chapter of the American Institute of Architects we have about 5,000 members who live and work here in Manhattan and AIA New

25:39York created the Center for Architecture and there is a 501c3 non-profit a traditional non-profit that is affiliated with it that is called the Center for Architecture so they are technically different entities they have different boards I am the director of both so they really work very much in tandem but the chapter the AIA is interested in serving a professional audience primarily and the Center for Architecture is really our community's way of

26:10reaching a broader public through exhibitions through programs and through really robust education programs for students oh cool so the Center is really the outreach element of AIA in a way that's the easier way to say it and the shorter way to say yes absolutely now you have been there forever as far as I can tell here what 21 years 22 years oh not quite not quite and it depends how you count this was like one of my first jobs

26:40in New York when I was very young I was in New York working another job and I came to a lecture here at the Center for Architecture and I thought this place is really cool and I'm interested maybe in going to planning school or architecture school so I was checking it out and I liked it and so I went on their website saw they were hiring applied for a job got a job worked here on program for a little over two years then I left I went to graduate school I did some other things and then I came back in 2014

27:11about 12 years ago because the people I had worked for here called me and said we're actually reorganizing the institution we're building a new board for the Center for Architecture we need we need somebody to help us do that and to raise the money and I came back at that time and I've been here since then and I've been the executive director since 2023 okay now when did the AIA New York chapter get started as the oldest so the chapter was founded in 1857 so when

27:41AIA was founded because AIA was founded here in Manhattan we're considered to be the founding chapter and of course that original organization that got founded turned into something much different today there's over 200 chapters around the world there's the big national headquarters in DC there's state level things there's all these different pieces but when it was first founded it was founded here so we lay claim to that also being our founding date is our AIA New York chapter okay now you have this beautiful building

28:12and the center has it always been that building or were there more historical buildings that it lived in AIA New York had offices in a couple different places including at the urban center long ago which you may remember and space up on Lexington Avenue which many members who were involved in the 90s recall some of these spaces being there for programs or buying paper contract documents things like that but the center for architecture has never existed anywhere else so in fact when AIA had the notion in the

28:43late 90s to acquire a space and put their offices in a public facing space there wasn't necessarily clarity on we're creating an institution we want to create a cultural institution I think there were certainly people talking about that but I think it was a little bit more of just a gamble and then what might it become so even you know the idea that the center for architecture would be an entity on its own rather

29:13just blossomed and there was so much activity happening here that it kind of began to have its own identity and make sense to stand on its own as well you have so much programming how many events do you have a month at the center a month I would say an average month there's probably about 10 or 12 evening programs which is what a lot of folks who come to lectures recognize as our primary form of programming we do monthly family programs

29:44on Saturdays for kids and families with our learning and engagement team which is our K-12 education team we do lots and lots of meetings and convenings here all the time we do policy and advocacy related programming and a lot of that happens in the morning or lunch time so it's hard to answer that question it's dozens of programs a month

30:08place for sure it's really vital and I know that you have had good success getting the non-architect public to come there for events more so than many other places well I have to say selfishly I am not an architect and I am very interested in that non-architect audience and I am very focused on having our architect members and leaders thinking about that audience as well something I think is

30:38special and interesting about architects again from a slight remove not being one that I've observed is they have an almost unquenchable need to talk to one another it's one of the reasons that your podcast exists it's one of the reasons that our organization exists we love to talk to one another it's an important part of what keeps people sharp and excelling in the profession and I think that's such a cool thing the challenge then becomes how do you keep having those conversations

31:08and maybe make them more accessible or have additional conversations that are actually about inviting other kinds of folks into the room just maybe to listen to you to be in dialogue with you for you to hear from them and I think that's a really interesting challenge that's a big part of what we're trying to do here you have a particular event that I have attended in the past that I love it's been going on a long time it involves cocktails and conversations tell our listeners about this series

31:40cocktails and conversations has been going on for quite a number of years I wish I had off the top of my head new I know we have a whole book of recipes and stories from it and that book itself is several years old so it's been at least 15 years I think and it was created by AI members to plan the events and they invite architects or figures in architecture to sit and have a conversation with an interlocutor who sometimes is a journalist or an academic or what have you

32:15who come here and create these sort of bespoke cocktails based on the person being interviewed so maybe that person is a bourbon drinker and they tell some stories about their life and then the bartenders create this sort of custom drink so they're never the same no conversation is the same no cocktail is the same and they're really great and your ticket gets you one or two drinks and this wonderful conversation and it's just a really great program and I hope never to stop doing it I

32:46have the book and I've noticed that architects really do like martinis that is a theme that comes up quite a lot there have been many martini variants it's true and I always look forward to those those particular cocktails and conversations events the martini ones but they're all great there's a lot

33:10kind of engagement do you hope to do in the next couple of years with the public you know we were talking a little bit about like the history of the organization I think the longer we're here the more we have an understanding of what we have to offer a broader public and that's both because we've done more things and seen more faces because of the different sort of things we

33:40have found is that the real secret is to partner directly with other organizations and communities and things like that because we have this really amazing audience we have a super engaged architectural and professional audience here in New York that's who's on your email list how do you reach the people that you're not already emailing and I think a lot of that has come through these direct partnerships which sometimes is because somebody comes to us about something sometimes we go to them sometimes we just organically connect so

34:10for example we run a festival every year called October which is New York's festival of architecture and design that's the whole month of October and that started in 2011 and it's grown and grown and grown and it looks like we're doing a thousand events but actually we have over a hundred partner organizations and everybody is doing something and so when you look at the whole thing it's wall to wall with program and events but the great thing is then we're sharing audiences

34:40with other organizations it's not all architecture organizations it's arts and civic organizations too we've been partnering more with libraries we've been doing a program with the Queens public library for the last couple of years with our learning

34:58that aren't as I said already on our email list and that's really where we think both we want to grow as an organization and we want to be engaging with a broader universe of New Yorkers that's great now I know there's a group in New York that sounds a little bit like you to the average public the architectural league what is the difference between them and the AIA so the executive director of the architecture league Jacob Moore and I talk about this a lot we actually kind of started

35:28our jobs at right around the same time and we're good friends so it's really nice we get to collaborate and think that through sometimes because every now and then something will come across my desk and this feels like a league thing are you interested in this and he does the thing

35:52public outreach we're both interested in bringing important voices from architecture here to speak to our community in New York but I think we have slightly different approaches so for example a huge number of the programs you see here at AI in New York are not planned by me or by someone on the staff rather because we're a volunteer essentially network a member organization league has members but it's a little

36:22name and you do all this other stuff and one of those things is getting involved with our committees here we have nearly 30 of them and they plan the majority of those programs and that's why you see such deep and broad programming here I couldn't possibly hire a staff that had that level of expertise that had somebody that knew everything about the design of school and educational buildings someone who knew

36:52planning and urban design I couldn't build a team that big and essentially have that because of the expertise of our members so then what the team here does is help make those things happen so other organizations don't quite have that same model it creates a little bit of like there's a cacophony here you know there's just like so many voices and so many people with these ideas but I love

37:22our best to make sure that we're checking every box for what New York architects work on and are interested in the public can visit your center not just when there's an event but you have a gallery and you have exhibitions on there tell me about that yeah that's absolutely right we're very proud that we are a free and open to the public gallery so there aren't tons of organizations of cultural institutions in New York that are completely free but ours is some programs have a small have a small cost but to just come into the

37:53galleries and see the exhibitions is free and we're open Monday through Saturday and we get a lot of great foot traffic from being in this wonderful neighborhood we're between Washington Square and Soho so we get really interesting foot traffic tourists students things like that and

38:15changing over the galleries so we run exhibitions every year from May until Labor Day and then we turn over the gallery we open them again in October and then they stay up through March there's a really wide range you can come here you can actually frequently see current work by New York architects but then also we'll have an exhibition looking at something happening somewhere else in the world or a political subject and how architecture intersects with that and we try to have a real mix of ideas

38:46and places that those ideas are happening in at any one time so there's always something interesting to see the last time I was there and this might have been a one off but I was struck with how many foreign languages were being spoken around me I don't know if it was tourists or students or what but it was really startling there was almost nobody around me talking to each other in English and I found that fascinating that everybody was in there visiting I love to hear that I hope it's tourists I

39:17also hope it's local New Yorkers who don't speak English I mean like to be a New York institution means that hopefully everybody is there and when we do an exhibition sometimes it gets us connected to interesting communities a couple of years ago we did an exhibition called constructing hope which was about architectural solution making during the war in Ukraine which was really a beautiful and interesting show and obviously many of the people we worked with for that show many of the people on the team of curators were Ukrainian and a lot of Ukrainian diaspora

39:48folks who are in New York there's a large Ukrainian community here in New York really close by in the East Village is a cultural center of that we're here visiting us at the Center for Architecture in some cases they're interested in Ukraine rather than architecture but we got them here to see kind of our lens on that thing I think that's a really exciting thing when that happens at the same time we had a show that same year called Spatializing Reproductive Justice which again architectural solution making around access

40:18to reproductive health care so people who are passionate about that subject not necessarily architecture people came to see that and understand that there's this spatial or architectural angle to this subject and we're engaging on that and that's my favorite thing when that happens when people are coming here maybe not because they're interested in architecture but they're interested in something else that we're showing and then we're showing them that that's architecture too and that there's an intersection there I think that's really powerful There's

40:49been so much controversy in recent months about the redesign of Washington things like the White House for instance and AIA nationally has finally sort of taken a position on that along with the National Trust at the very least trying to hold officials for following the process for making these changes not saying that you can't do it but you've got to get the right approvals and things like that has the political aspect of that affected

41:20things in New York yes I think so I mean I'm very happy to see our national organization really focusing on that taking it seriously yes you know putting out those letters is that's actually a very important part of it but I think seeing that real follow up and collaboration with other institutions and other associations is really important I mean you know we're living in a time right now where even much much richer more powerful entities and associations in Washington are having a very hard time making things happen but

41:51I think one of the things that's happened locally that I think is a good thing is it's certainly getting people's attention it's reminding people that architecture and design and space are political and that they matter and that our public buildings matter and that the public is thinking about that I think gives us an important opportunity to talk to them about what our point of view is about that and why it matters and I think that's a good thing I mean in fact in 2016 when

42:22people were initially like you know oh my gosh what's happening in politics in United States we created a program here at the AI in New York called the civic leadership program the idea being to help train up architects to move into maybe elected office maybe other ways of getting civically involved and that program is still going and has been great also in those years we have dozens of members now serving on community

42:53out of this sort of awakening around just being distressed by what they saw happening politically so I don't celebrate the things that caused that distress but as you know someone leading like a civically minded organization it's great to have people want to feel civically engaged you know even if it comes from a difficult place at the beginning I think really good things can come from that there are a lot of attorneys of course that become politicians and some doctors and things like that we

43:24had a lieutenant governor for a while who was an architect here in North Carolina but I noticed that architects don't typically go into office do you know of any around the country that are in some sort of publicly elected office I don't know of any registered architects in public office I think there are some interesting stories of people in public office who

43:50one of our congress people from the area here in New York the most famous one really Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez her father was an architect so it's always interesting to have people that know how to talk to us and about us one thing I will say that I'm seeing is really interesting is there are two universities in New York whose presidents are architects and these are relatively new developments so the president of the new school Joel Towers is an architect

44:20and the new president of FIT Jason Schupack was an architectural education and was a dean of an architecture school was a dean at Drexel so I think that's really interesting that people with architectural backgrounds moving into leadership positions that are not architecture offices or schools I think that is something we're going to see more of because I think the way architects think collaboratively iteratively problem solvers knowing

44:51how to design against constraints these are the skills that people need to really I think take a lot of institutions into the 21st century for real and I think architects may find more opportunities like that for leadership and I hope they embrace them of course we want people practicing but I think that it's great that that's happening too okay last question LaGuardia airport brand new beautiful billions of dollars they managed to build it

45:22and tear down the old one and not stop the flights which is a miracle in engineering for itself from an architectural perspective how come they can't link a subway to it you'd think you know if we could put a man on the moon why can't there be a subway to LaGuardia I'm glad you asked that because I was prepared to say yes I like it too it's great but the one thing I don't I'm not happy with is that I still have to take the bus or a cab I know it's very hard I mean you know

45:52infrastructure is very hard like the we saw how much they spent on not having that train there right so it's intense I I'm very happy that there is real reform happening at the city and state level addressing some of our issues with cost on how we get this stuff built and there's a lot of green shoots I mean for instance the inner borough express train that's moving ahead you know that this looks like it's happening which is a new train line in New York City that is linking through Brooklyn

46:22and Queens sort of an outer ring yeah

46:31city on what that ought to look like not so much the design of the thing but how it should impact neighborhoods you know how zoning might need to change so that we have transit oriented development in these places and all the opportunity that that creates not just for architects to design those projects but for people in those neighborhoods to have better quality of life and better mobility and connectivity with the rest of the city make sure when you go to New York that you visit the Center for Architecture Thank you Jesse Thank you so much George this was great That was

47:02George's conversation with Jesse Lazar Monica

The history of Futurama

47:06Pennick is an architectural historian and associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin Today's conversation is all about Futurama Here's George and Monica Pennick Monica when you were on the show last we talked about Elizabeth Gordon and House Beautiful but today we're going to talk about something called Futurama Where did that word come from? That is a great question The Futurama that I'm talking about today is the installation

47:36that General Motors installed at the New York World's Fair in 1964 but there was a previous version of that in 1939 also called Futurama and I think it was sort of a compilation of words but the main part of that term that's important is future because they're really looking to what the world might look like decades or hundreds of years down the road so designing for the

48:06future and using sort of this wonderful term to encapsulate an exciting moment that's being envisioned at at the time it was the first thing to really introduce the public to the idea of express ways or today what we would call interstate highways connecting the nation yes that's right so the Futurama 1939 which was held at the New York World's Fair in 1939 was a collaboration between General Motors the

48:36styling team at the moment was being led by the famous Carly Earle and they commissioned Norman Bel Geddes who had an incredible background everything from theater design to industrial design they commissioned him in the 30s to design this vision of the future and of course because it's General Motors part of the story of the future is about transportation and one of the things that Norman Bel Geddes and the GM team envisioned in the 1930s

49:06was this interconnected system of roads that would move vehicles from the suburbs to the countryside to the urban centers with great speed and with great capacity so this was really the theme of that 1930s vision and the great sort of legacy of the designs that Norman Bel Geddes proposed was he had these multi lane streets running through the countryside

49:37these multi lane streets running through giant urban centers like New York City where tens of thousands of vehicles would be running at all hours of the day in straights and curves and interchanges at the highest speeds imaginable and this was the idea in 1939 for the first Futurama that idea of being interconnected through these massive systems and it actually presaged the 1950s interstate system

50:08in fact some of the designs for the clover leaf patterns that were proposed for that first Futurama show up in places like Dallas and Los Angeles to this very day Norman Valgettis was actually a consultant on some of those highway projects so what started as a dream of moving tens of thousands of cars across the landscape turned into the reality that we still have in the U.S. today And if you look up the 1939

50:39models from that fair the architecture is really incredible the buildings that were built in around these highway systems Yes so the highway system was certainly the arteries but then there was this amazing vision you know very much of its moment streamlined design of both small scale and large scale buildings being put up in cities and countryside as sort of the stuff through which everything else was transferred

51:09so yeah the buildings themselves were amazing works of architecture futuristic but conveying that sense of the moment and conveying that sense of speed and streamlining that was ever present in the 1939 version of Futurama I know in 1964 there was a ride called Futurama was this a ride in 1939 as well it was it was so the Futurama 1964 was modeled on Futurama 1939

51:39in 1939 GM had hired Norman Belgetti as a consultant and part of his vision was to create what we would think of today as an immersive design experience where you would move people through small scale dioramas and in 1939 you moved on a conveyor built in these sort of large six feet tall chairs that had winged backs and blue mohair upholstery and they had some

52:09speakers in the wings so the narrator could tell you the story but the whole ride would move very slowly through these scale dioramas of this future vision of the countryside small cities and this urban metropolis that we've spoke about already with the highways moving through all of them so the people would move through and they would see the future in all of these lands that model was so successful in 1939

52:39that in 1964 GM wanted to use the same exact concept so their vision of the future was laid out in scale dioramas different segments of the world and the ideas that people would move through on a ride something similar to what we're accustomed to now seeing in Disneyland or Disney World but the people would move through and see the visions of the future so same concept years apart you have you have a great specialty you look

53:10at these events and how they predicted the future and sort of see which of these things came true which of them didn't so what were they thinking in 1939 was going to be normal in 1964 yeah so 1939 predicted the future about you know to two and a half decades ahead so I think that the groundbreaking moment was really this transportation artery the fact that so much of the world would

53:40move and so many places would be connected so easily not so revolutionary in terms of the kinds of buildings that we might inhabit or the kinds of jobs that people might do but really how the world might be connected and the speed at which life might unfold 1964 was far more progressive I think the visions in that moment which was deeply embedded in the space age were far grander and so in 1964 GM

54:12was thinking about not just the future a couple of decades ahead but 60 years ahead in 1964 presaged 2024 so really our current moment right now but in 1964 the group was not just thinking about what might life look like in a couple of decades in the United States they were thinking about what might life look like in the United States on planet Earth in the known universe and beyond and so they were really thinking

54:43about these new frontiers which was very much a current fascination at that moment so the 1964 Futurama laid out this vision of living and working and playing in places like Antarctica in jungles that were previously uninhabited in places that were under the ocean they looked at living on the moon and traveling through space and living and working in those interstitial spaces so this was really about taming these

55:15new frontiers that humankind was eager to explore so 1964 really blew the lid off the idea of what might be possible in that future world and it was remarkable because GN as a company was already invested in their research and development arms of their company they were already invested in trying to make that future vision become reality so truly a fascinating and grand vision of the world of tomorrow so

55:46there's a 1939 version there's a 1964 version and then it seems like they did it again to a certain extent at Epcot in 1982 with something called world of motion yeah that's not something that I'm as familiar with but this concept of building future worlds and imagining what life would look like has many points of imagination they did tiny versions of this general motors did tiny versions of this at the world's fairs they did

56:16versions of this in industrial shows called motoramas and so I think they found this recipe that worked where they could present the idea to a curious public and the curious public would come and see it you know everywhere from the world's fair to to Disney world much later is anything left from 1939 or 1964 in terms of physical buildings or archives that maybe ended up in their design

56:47facility anything left yeah I wish there was more left but as most great world's fairs these things were designed to be ephemeral yeah so most of the things have been lost to time what we do have actually here at the University of Texas where where I teach we have the Harry Ransom Center which holds the Norman Bel Geddes collection within that collection we have some drawings but most wonderfully we have some scale model cars that

57:17were used in the 1939 show so they were tiny sort of matchbox size larger scale and these would zoom around through the diorama on these enormous highways we have some of those artifacts here there are other scale models of General Motors cars and concept cars that still exist some in private collections a few at the General Motors archives and heritage collection which has been so helpful for me in my research so there are little bits and pieces

57:48here and there primarily small scale artifacts and vehicles what we haven't found surviving are any of the model buildings for example from the 1964 fair there was this incredible undersea hotel called the Hotel Atlantis oh wow and it was fantastic sort of met as a luxury resort for people who were living and working under the ocean beautiful beautiful stage set of this sort of almost

58:18bulbous type hotel that had a large stem and a rounded base beautiful really very futuristic looking and we had hoped that that a model of that might still be hidden somewhere in the GM archives but it hasn't surfaced yet and what I understand from the archivist is much of that stuff was seen as designed for the moment and after that its time was done so we do have press releases photographs photographs a few small

58:49artifacts but the large scale stuff has has mostly been lost to time has there been any movement to try to have another futurama in our lifetimes today in the 21st century oh great question I don't know the answer to that I would love to see it both the early futuramas were so successful both of them broke the records at the world's fairs for the most number of participants both really set this tone for imagining the world of tomorrow

59:20both I think took advantage of a moment that was both filled with anxiety and optimism and I could see ourselves in this current moment right now just being ready for that exact kind of exploration I don't know if there are plans but it seems like wouldn't that be amazing well the world of motion changed into something Epcot called Test Track which is a slot car thrill ride basically sponsored by General Motors and that has

59:50had several iterations it's on its third run now just opened last year with version number three and it is all about the automotive experience of course it's not quite the whole culture that was embraced in Futurama but it's still an exciting exhibition at Epcot yeah so what's interesting about what you're describing is this sort of automotive experience and what I really appreciated about the Futurama versions of this was they were considering the grand

1:00:22scheme of how we live and work and how automobiles connect or the connective fabric to all of that so in Futurama 1964 for example it was of course about the automotive experience and they had these incredible concept cars that were sort of the stars of the show as you moved through that Futurama they had other incredible vehicles that GM was prototyping at the time including things like lunar rovers but on the side of all that they had

1:00:53also these incredible models of a suburban home hanging from a cliffside so as you're viewing the image you know you're sort of going through on your ride and seeing this you would see this house and these concept cars parked in the driveway or under the carport but you also get a glimpse of what the home of the future would look like so the part that I love is this is an automotive company General Motors although they have of course an expansive research and development arm but they're really considering

1:01:23more than just the automotive experience at these Futuramas and I think that was a big part of its brilliance and success is there any relationship between GM's Futurama and the animated series that we've been watching for years on TV great question I think the the shared thing is the name but I'm not sure if there's anything deeper than that but of course everything is imagining what the world might look like just a different perspective if you go on the internet

1:01:53and type in Futurama 1939 or Futurama 1964 there are lots of great clips of these exhibitions and the rides and it's a real rabbit hole I gotta tell you I thought I'd spend five minutes and I was 90 minutes into it before I woke up so it's just a fascinating time and I wish I had the opportunity to go to these yeah I wish I had the opportunity to go to these as well thankfully with the the wonderful images that still exist

1:02:23I've been able to take virtual tours and imagine myself you know what it would have been like in 1964 to go on these rides to hear the narrator's story and the sound score and to imagine these dioramas some of which moved right they used animatronics in a lot of these so it was a real immersive immersive experience that I think must have been so engaging at that moment and I too wish that I would have had a chance to see it in more than in

1:02:55stills and wonderful videos but we have that and I'm so grateful that we have that preserved for history to get a sense of what that vision would have been and if you talk to anybody particularly who was in the northeast between about 1940 and 1960 odds are they attended the 1964 version and have almost uniformly positive memories of it yes that's true and I was so lucky I've met many people including members of my own family who were there and have

1:03:26memories and you know everyone has a story to tell about their favorite part whether it was a car or the house of the future or the moving octopus that apparently scared a woman so bad that she jumped out of the conveyor car there everyone has a story but uniformly as you say you know just fascinated and enthralled by this incredible installation that was put on well thank you so much for coming back Monica and I could talk about this all day but I really appreciate your insight

1:03:56thank you George for having me I appreciate it George was speaking with Monica Pinnock

AI lounge music with Heron W

1:04:02Heron W writes produces and performs Cocktail Hour Companion it's a YouTube project built with AI around vintage lounge and space age sounds 1960s bachelor pad records and vintage spy movie jazz reimagined for today it all started with a concept album called Spacey Cakes which Heron described as a fun creative experiment now there's a whole catalog including Shaken Not Stirred Martini

1:04:32Confidential and Martini O'Clock Hi Horne welcome to the show nice to be here thank you for having me before we talk about your breakout hit Spacey Cakes and everything has come from that I want to ask about your latest project which I'm fascinated with and this is 1950s grocery store elevator music what's all that yeah so I wanted to bring people back to that time in the 50s 60s where you're shopping for your groceries and there was

1:05:04this kind of music that was called Muzak M-U-Z-A-K yeah and I wanted to bring in you know that feel but with make sure it's upbeat it's happy you know makes you feel good that was a lot of the feedback I had gotten on Spacey Cakes but that wasn't particularly the grocery store type music so I wanted to really focus in on that and looking it up it's like is it grocery store or is it elevator music those two terms kind of go back and forth so I just called it grocery store elevator music

1:05:35well I've been googling it here and it looks like Muzak sold to those markets among other places that's right I didn't even know about them until Spacey Cakes came out and a lot of people were commenting hey this is Muzak this is Muzak so I started looking into it and I learned where that came from I remember when elevators had music in them that was playing to keep you company as you were going between floors I guess to kind of lessen the awkwardness that you experience in an elevator yeah it was a better

1:06:06time wasn't it they cared about your entertainment even when you're in the elevator so how did Spacey Cakes get started that was what about a year and three months ago it was August August of last year okay yeah I wanted to when the whole AI music thing came out I wanted to give it a try I was always a big fan of the mid-century lounge music the Henry Mancini Peter Gunn album's probably my favorite oh yes

1:06:37and I just really enjoyed that to me that was kind of the standard for your bachelor pad type music and I just loved it and I wanted to see could I create something like that of course I like sci-fi too so I thought I'd mix those two things let's try a lounge music with a sci-fi twist and that's where Spacey Cakes came from and you have two heroines I think of Spacey Cakes they have names that's right yeah so I I used these female astronauts and I asked

1:07:09the fans hey what do you want to name them so I let I let them come up with names so the dark haired girl her name is Glenda and the blonde is Eva and they're in their spacesuits sipping martinis yep and it also creates a controversy because they're in space with a space helmet on yet they have a martini in their hand nobody knows how they're going to drink that I keep telling them we're working on a solution or we have a solution I just haven't revealed it yet right NASA people are working on that as we speak

1:07:39exactly yes well let's hear the song that started it all this is called Martini on Mars from Spacey Cakes

1:08:15to the the of the the the Thank you.

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