#476/John Lautner: Jan-Richard Kikkert + Tycho Saariste + David Mauer + Elizabeth Godley + ADFF's Kyle Bergman + Musical Guest Nicole Zuraitis

Welcome to US Modernist Radio

0:00Hi, I'm Carol Wedge, the CEO of American Institute of Architects, and you're listening to U.S. Modernist Radio. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Oh, I don't care what mama don't allow, gonna draw my modern anyhow. Mama don't allow no architecture around here. Welcome to U.S. Modernist Radio, where we talk and laugh with people who enjoy, own, create, dream about, preserve, love, and hate modernist architecture, the most exciting and controversial buildings in the world.

0:38I'm Tom Geild, and with us today, two special guys from the Netherlands, Jan-Ricard Kikert and Tico Ceriste, the Lewis and Clark of architectural exploration. They are on a mission to visit nearly all the John Lautner houses in the world. Next, David Maurer and Elizabeth Godley are bringing one of those Lautner houses back from decades of decline. We'll wrap up with returning podcast guest Nicole Zeraitis, the Grammy-winning jazz singer-songwriter with a new album.

1:10But before that, Kyle Bergman shares what's up for this fall's Architecture and Design Film Festival in New York. And now, the guy you'll see in the audience on opening night of that film festival, Mr. Modernism, George Smart. Hey, thanks, Tom. The ADFF is always a great experience. I love going every year. But if you can't make it, the ADFF travels to cities all around the world.

Why architects love order

1:34Today, let's talk about architects. They're highly trained to bring order to disorder, to take ideas to reality. You can spot one at pretty much any party. They're the ones gently repositioning things on your bookshelf into a meaningful yet asymmetrical composition. When asked about popular culture, they explain that they don't watch television. Instead, they engage with media environments. Oh, okay. Architects never enter a room. They experience a spatial sequence.

2:07They don't design a hallway. They choreograph a procession. A window is a moment of transparency. And a porch is a threshold condition negotiating a landscape. Ask an architect where the bathroom is, and you'll only find out after they describe the tectonic honesty of the route to the bathroom, which mere mortals like me call a hallway. Meanwhile, I've really got to go. It's enough to make you head towards the threshold condition or sneak out through a moment of transparency.

2:38Besides language, there's some pretentiousness. Architects believe IKEA is a complete moral failing. They believe that a wall gap that casts a small shadow can redeem a soul. They wince at the word cozy because cozy was never an element in their studio classes in school. And they have opinions about gravel. So many opinions. Yet no profession yearns more to be publicly appreciated than architecture.

3:09Every architect secretly dreams that strangers will stop them in the street and whisper, your credit union changed my life. But that rarely happens. Every 10 years, the profession has an existential crisis about being unloved and convenes many meetings on how to engage the public. Every damn time, they decide that only by significantly educating the public and elevating them will architects finally be appreciated. Needless to say, this strategy fails every damn time because the public is really not interested in being elevated.

3:44For the public, architecture is 8, 9, 10, or lower in their list of life priorities. Architecture will never be at 1, 2, or 3 like it is for architects. The public just wants to have fun, see some cool buildings, ask a few questions, and move on to their other priorities or a martini. In short, to be loved, architects have to get in that conceptual elevator and go down a few floors instead of trying to wangle all the public to get in and come upstairs.

4:17Otherwise, architects will continue to want to be understood by the public in a way that is impossible. 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 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.

Hunting down John Lautner houses

4:50My next two guests were on the show early on for U.S. Modernist Radio, and I love these guys. They are like the Batman and Robin of the architecture world. They fly around, they solve mysteries, they're all over the place, and they have found just about everything there is to know about John Lautner. But we're going to find out if there's any new information about it. Welcome, Tico and Jan Ricard. Thank you. Happy to be here.

5:21Again. Let's go back. What started this crazy thing, this adventure that you went on now at least, what, 20 years ago, 25 years ago? 20 years ago. Yeah. It's a long story, actually. But I worked in an office, and I was asked to take care of the library. And I agreed to do this, though. But I said I want to buy at least one book a week, you know, to expand our library. And I happened to be having the office around the corner of a very great architecture bookstore, Architektura Natura, in Amsterdam.

5:53And I bought a book on an architect whose work was fascinating. Something totally outside the average Dutch condition. I looked at it, I stored it, I put it away, and I adjusted it, and that was it. My wife happened to come from the U.S. We were there at Christmas time, and my brother-in-law said, I want to show you an island which has the most fantastic decorated houses. So we went to the island, and we passed into one magnificent place after the other, and one was there laying there like a fish on the seashore with minimum decoration.

6:29And I thought, ah, I recognize the thing, but it didn't know exactly what it was. It turned out to be a John Lautner house. And then after that, I got the question to organize the trip with students to see architecture. So I thought I can go to a city and visit all the architecture there. But then I thought, oh, maybe it's nice to just focus on one career, an excellent career, and try to visit everything that's possible. So the conditions should have been excellent work, progress, more or less located in reasonable driving time.

7:00So then I thought, that's a great idea to do so. But the problem was that the addresses were never published of Lautner's work. A handful, like we could found eight addresses. So that's where the story stalled a bit, said, well, if I don't have addresses, we cannot go there. Then I found in this book of Tarsian, a big Tarsian series. And in the back of the book was a map where Lautner indicated all his built works. So then it was easier because of the introduction of Google Earth to start looking for it. But I thought, oh, this will take years. You know, I need a companion to help me doing this.

7:33So then I happened to talk to Tichou. Yeah, that's where I stepped in. So I knew Lautner a little bit because I was with the university. We did a trip to the U.S., to L.A. in 1994. And on our list were, by coincidence, two Lautner houses, the Wolf House, and Silvertop. And Silvertop, it was right after the Northridge earthquake. So it was in a very bad state. And so it was like a building site at the time. But then we went to the Wolf House.

8:03And the Wolf House, I completely was flabbergasted. I loved it. It was so different than all the modern architecture. It was so different from the Neutras. And I loved it, just the way, the organic architecture of it. It felt like this is a place which is not only to show off, but it's really nice to live in. But then I didn't know a lot of them. And then it took years before then the Lautner monography came out, or at least that it was for sale in the Netherlands. And somebody gave it to me as a present.

8:35And then I looked at this book and was like, wow, I need to see this. And shortly after, Jan Richard called me with this plan of doing this excursion. And I said, well, if you're going to see Lautner, I'm going to join you, whatever it takes. Of course, I was not involved with the academy where Jan Richard was a teacher. But I said, well, I'm not a student either, but whatever it takes, I will join you. So then he said, well, you can help me look up some addresses and we can see what we can organize. And that's when it really took off.

9:05And you guys were poring over Google Earth Maps and scouting rooftops? Absolutely. Everything we could find, white pages to see the original names. If they were mentioned, they're calling people with the same names as the owners, looking at things like Property Shark to see who could be the owner to contact them. Actually, it was at the time that my wife was always going to sleep very early because she was pregnant. And then I was like, okay, just continue looking for houses on Google Earth.

9:35And I wouldn't go to sleep until I found one. And sometimes it was like 3 a.m. in the night. And then we texted each other immediately, I found one. Yeah. And he wouldn't go to sleep either before finding one. So it's a great adventure. It went back and forth finding these places. And then we combined like the Google Earth. We combined it with the information in the books, like the map from the Taschen book and the floor plans from Lautner's own monograph. And then it was also helpful that there was a list of names of the project.

10:07Sometimes it said just a name, you know, and then we looked it up. And it was like, for instance, a connection of a name of a person who won an Oscar. And the next year there was a Lautner building with the same name. So that has to be a connection. And then looking through family members of that person that passed away in the meantime, some people had a very original name, so single name. So it was easier to find them. And in the end, we literally found everything. There was not one house that we did not find. So also, of course, with the help of the archives, there was this big exhibition on Lautner's work in the Hammer.

10:41And on the blueprints was actually often the address, so we could write it down. Or we went to the archives, and we took out roles. And like for some clients, there were more locations. So we quickly looked it up, and then we found them. Like, for instance, the first house in our book is the Aldrich. And it was interesting because there were several designs for A. Aldrich, also on different addresses. And then at the moment, we looked at Google Earth and said, oh, God, this has to be. It was like a pool and a little extension to a house.

11:11So we drove to that address. And then, yeah, there was a big garden wall, so it was difficult to see. And then Tycho took his camera over the edge of the wall, straight into the face of the guy who was enjoying his poolside afternoon. So the guy ran out and said, what's going on here? And then we said, oh, you know, don't you know you live in a real John Lautner design building? And he didn't know. And just a few years later, the house was for sale, saying, real John Lautner design. And you've got to turn this into a movie, guys.

11:42I mean, you've got all the elements here of a great film, a great buddy movie across America, finding all the Lautners. Yeah. Yeah. We'd love to. Yeah. How long did it take you to find most of them? Well, the first, we had this excursion plant that was in May. And we started, I think, just before Christmas in 2006. So May 2007, the excursion was there. We had like four months or five months to find everything. And then we found maybe the first 60 houses.

12:13And after this excursion, we just continued because we thought, well, the quality of work was so high and it was so amazing that we said, we want to do this again. So the next year, we tried again with students, but then not enough people signed up. And then we were very disappointed, of course, because we knew how fascinating this work was. But then we decided to just do the two of us and just continue. And then we could also concentrate a bit more and really focus a bit more on finding these addresses and not do side work like Neutra's or Schindler's.

12:45Right. Actually, the director of the school, the Academy of Architecture in Arnhem, Lo Jakobs, and he said, well, maybe it's better if just the two of you go, because then you can also see the obscure ones, you know, the carport and the pool extension. And then you don't have to repeat what you did last year, but you can really dive into the full body of work. And he sponsored also part of our trip. So we owe great thanks to him. Absolutely. Yeah. Are there any houses by Lautner left that you haven't gotten into that are on your unicorn list?

13:15Yes. There are still a few. That's a very painful question.

13:21There's, of course, the Malibu Cliff House or Pacific Coast House or Levy House or whatever you call it. Yes. That one is just a fortress and just impossible. We tried everything and we contacted everybody who would possibly know him. Yes. And we came very far, very close. But in the end, always when he found out that it was these guys from Amsterdam, then he just said no. Yeah. And the last time we were in the U.S., we went to the U.S. after we finished our first edition.

13:52And then we passed the house and it was just a car with a guard in it, you know, with these blackout windows. Yeah. So, we stepped out of our car and immediately this sort of gorilla guy jumped in our neck, you know, to get rid of us. Yeah. So, it's really well protected. Did you give him a book? I imagine if you handed the gorilla guy a book, you would have gotten in. Probably not. I think he was not the kind of guy who would be charmed by a book. I don't think he was able to read, actually. Okay. Okay. And then there's the Siegel House, which also has turned out to be rather difficult, earned before by Courtney Cox, who bought it from the original client.

14:31And then we were close to getting there and they were moving houses and then they said, ah, no, it's not so convenient. And then the house got sold. So, we said, okay, now we get a new chance to visit the house, but it got more difficult even. It's Ed Norton now, right? No, no. I just want to see Jimmy McCourt. Okay. Ed Norton, I want to see the Stevens House. All right. Yeah. That we've seen, but there's always a reason why we're not allowed. So, it's the uber-rich who don't want to be bothered by a flying Dutchman. And there's people who own houses that were in the family, but they're very poor-conditioned houses.

15:05I always thought they feel ashamed. And for us, it doesn't matter, of course. We prefer a house which needs a bit of paint than the ones that are being remodeled. So, for instance, Zimmermann, always, we tried him forever. And I once talked him to the phone, and then he said, well, you can see the house after I'm dead. So, yeah. Ah, well, at least there's an opening for you. I think you guys will probably be around for that. That house has a funny story because we could see who were the neighbors. And then we also found a phone number of the neighbors.

15:38So, I found a lady who lives next door to the Zimmermann house. And she said, oh, that's interesting. She says, but, you know, neighbor. And, you know, in the back of my garden, we have a little wooden shed, a tree house. And if you climb the tree house, you can look actually straight from the tree house into the Zimmermann. So, that's what we did, actually. Wow.

15:58That is resourceful. Yeah, I know.

16:02You really are superheroes. You'll just make anything happen. I don't know. I'm always surprised that we never got shot, actually, because, you know. Now, between the first edition of Lautner A to Z and this new edition, have you found any new information or houses or things surprising?

New discoveries and restorations

16:22Yeah, I mean, some houses were remodeled after they were sold. A lot of houses changed hands, actually. A lot of people passed away, also. So, in that sense, there was a very strong reason to revisit the Lautner houses. Like, Silver Top has been remodeled. But also other houses, houses that we never managed to get into. So, suddenly, we were able to see, like, Lautner's own house. The lady sold the house, and it's now being renovated by Frank Escher. And then we were able to see the house for the first time. So, we stood in front of the door many times.

16:55Yes. And now we could go inside. So, we wrote in our book the last chapter of our visits to all the houses. So, in that sense, it has new information. Also, for instance, the Elrod house has been really beautifully restored at the moment. Like, 10 years or so. So, we really have them. Yes. Also, the Harpel guest house, which was just on the start of construction when our first edition came out. And it's now finished. So, there's a new Lautner. I mean, that's something. Yes. I've been in that guest house. Designed in 1958. But newly built 1958 Lautner design now.

17:29And it's fabulous. It really is. Yeah. Mark Hadawi is the owner of that. And he is a longtime Lautner fan. Owns the Harpel house. And the story is that there was a guest house designed for the property. Never realized. And Mark built it. I visited the house a couple times. We had an event there, actually, a few years ago. Oh, nice. But I also visited during construction. And you talk about detail-oriented. I watched Mark have a conversation with one of the builders about the intersection of a piece of glass that went on for 45 minutes.

18:04And they were problem-solving and figuring out how to get that thing in there just right. Yeah. And the whole guest house is worthy of Lautner's work because it's really a masterpiece of construction. Absolutely. It's always interesting because Lautner always said that he never repeated himself, which he really didn't. But we found out in the archives that if an idea never managed to make it into construction, then the idea would be reused. So, we actually saw drawings.

18:34And you could really see the handwriting on the drawings. That guest house was drawn by the same person who drew the Ernst Lautner house in Pensacola. The same detailing, the same handwriting on it. And that has a similarity with the brickwork going down the hill and the roof. Shifting the circles. So, then it's actually interesting, then, to see who actually made that drawing to see how it got that far. And we first saw that drawing when we visited Andrew Nasser. He showed us the drawings.

19:04Maybe even before Mark saw them. We saw them when we visited Andrew Nasser, the engineer who worked for Lautner. It links together somehow. The more we knew, the more people we knew. They know each other. They gave us information. It gets more and more richer. Like, even up to today, like, there's not a day that we don't think about Lautner's work. Or do you know when I communicated about it? Or little things that show up on the internet. So, it's still very current. In 1948, Lautner designed a house for Jules Salkin, who was an architect that worked in his office.

19:36And for decades, this was considered unbuilt. Yeah. And then it kind of surfaced suddenly for sale in 2014. And Trina Turk and Jonathan Skow bought it. Are there any other houses that are rumored or unbuilt that you think might actually be built? Well, there were a couple of deep rumors, but then the more we searched, most of the rumors were not true. So, we're still hoping to find one which is built or a real Lautner design. But there are some people who claim to have a Lautner design.

20:08But when you check a bit closer and check the drawings, then we doubt it. So, if it's real Lautner. And there are also some houses where Lautner put his name on the drawings just for somebody else. Because he was licensed and somebody else was not. And it was not that difficult. He said, okay, if you want to build this and you want me to sign this drawing, just do it. Yeah. So, are there real Lautners? Probably not.

20:33Are there any Lautners in trouble right now that people should be paying attention to and try to save? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. So, the Zimmermann house is one which is definitely in trouble because that one is falling apart. And it looks like nobody lives there for the last 20 years. I mean, we've been there over 10 times in the last 20 years. And every time we come there, there's more dust. And it looks like it's deteriorating further and further. So, if that comes for sale, you would have to make a real big effort to save it.

21:05It needs a lot of money. People could also just say, just raise it and build something else there. So, that's a great danger. Why don't they either sell it or fix it up? Actually, it's unclear who owns it. If it's still Zimmermann, but then nobody knows how to reach him. So, it's a bit weird. Okay. It's like the same with the Frank Lloyd Wright. The one over on Skyway Drive, the overhanging one, Sturges has. Yes. With Lautner's suit. Sturges, okay, yes. It's also in a very bad shape and nobody knows who actually owns it or nobody's taking care and they just let it fall off the hill.

21:40But also, a lot of projects have been demolished in the meantime between the first edition, the second edition. So, the kind of factory is gone. The permanent pool, the second one is gone. The pool behind the Nautra house is gone. It was written about the Wolfie Pool in Playboy Magazine in 1964. The client wrote very funny about the building process, but it also harmed Lautner because he was complaining about the builder. But it also, of course, reflected on Lautner as an architect, but that's gone also.

22:10That's also one of the reasons why we decided to publish the addresses for people to be aware that they actually are living or owning a Lautner house. Yes. There were a lot of people complaining about the fact that we were going to publish the addresses, but we said, that's important that people know where these are so the addresses in public gives them more protection. Yes. It's absolutely essential so that people know where something is because you can't save it if you don't know where it's located. Yeah. Helena Erawete worked in Lautner's office for many years, has been the heir apparent in restoring a number of these.

22:47Does she have new projects going on or is she just working on the old ones? I think we last met her two and a half years ago at the opening of the exhibition in Santa Barbara. And that seemed like a final collection of her lifespan of work. I'm not sure if she has many new projects going on, but she's also in her 70s. So I'm not sure if she's very active at the moment. But we don't know, eh? We don't know. She might be still doing things with...

23:19She's a very energetic, very vibrant person. So it might be very well possible that she works on things. But she, of course, renovated the Bob Hope House. That was a big project. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, she really made it up to date to today somehow with, in the back of her mind, what the original idea was before Dolores Hope put her finger in the design process. But it's been done in a beautiful way. So it's an absolutely worthwhile visiting. We visited also the last time we were in the US.

23:50So we also write about it in our book. Is there an architect the two of you admire that you've thought about maybe taking on next? Yeah. Always. Always. So last trip, we saw quite a bit of Ken Kellogg's work. Great choice. Which is very interesting. But there's also a bit of a lack of the addresses. But in the end, we will be able to get those from the archives because we actually saved his archives personally. How did you personally save it?

24:22Well, actually, by being in the right place at the right moment. We called Kellogg House. Kellogg himself, he was already in a nursing home. And his wife answered the phone. Can we come visit? She said, yeah, anytime, no problem. So we came there. And then after, it's a very nice, beautiful house. We went to see the archive. It was like a small pavilion in the garden. And she said, yeah, we don't have the key. And then her daughter arrived. And she was like, who are these guys? And what are they doing here?

24:52And, well, we need to clean up. And in three days, you're also going to a nursing home. And, yeah, this old woman here, she tells you all kinds of stories. But it's not true. And you have to leave. So we said, what are you going to do with all this stuff? What are you going to do with the archive? It has to be cleared because the house needs to be sold next week. So, well, what are you going to do with it? I don't know. And we said, we need to go to a museum. At the time, we knew a couple of influential people, like the owner of the Doolittle House and the caretaker of the Bob Hope House. And we knew the people from the Santa Barbara Museum.

25:26So we called a couple of people, very influential people. And then they managed to make an appointment and they picked up the whole archive. But if we had not been there on that day, a week later, everything could have been gone. It would have been in the trash. In the trash. Yeah. Another case closed for the dynamic duo. So we put ourselves on the shoulder for that, actually. Yes. We got a thank you letter later from the daughter that she was eternally thankful for us to have it organized. That it all was now in the museum and it's properly archived.

25:59Yes. You need an aviation sponsor where you are that can just, you know, on a moment's notice, put you on the plane so you can sweep in and save the day.

26:14Well, guys, thank you so much for coming back on the show. The book is Lautner A to Z, second edition, an exploration of the complete built work of John Lautner. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thanks so much. George was chatting with Lautner fans Jan-Ricard Kikert and Tico Ceriste.

Restoring a Mount Washington Lautner

26:35Before there was a house on a lot at Mount Washington, Los Angeles, there was almost a Frank Lloyd Wright house in that same spot. World War II got in the way, so the family turned to Wright's former apprentice, John Lautner. The amazing house fell into disrepair over the years, and now the original owner's grandson and his partner are bringing that house back to life. Here's George's conversation with him, David Maurer and Elizabeth Godley. Elizabeth, let's start with you.

27:05You're the only person I know who's been in Lifetime movies. Is that one of those, like, at Christmastime, where the woman goes back home and finds the boyfriend she rejected in high school who's sort of a slug, but then she turns him around, marries him, and goes back to New York? Is that the kind of the plot? No, not as whimsical as that. I was in a few of those, like, this really happened, but actors are going to act it out. And I was one of the actors acting out what really happened. Were you the dead body or the murderer?

27:37I was the dead person in one. And then the other one was more lighthearted, like, just crazy stories about ex-boyfriends or ex-girlfriends. And I was usually the straight person, meaning, like, in comedy, the person who's not silly. I was usually the person dealing with the crazy boyfriend. So, yeah, it was a fun time. Well, it's prepared you, I think, for the world of modernist houses, because it gets a little crazy there, too.

28:13Yes, yes. Yeah, well, always good lessons there. David, tell me about the history of the house. It started when your grandparents, Edgar and Allison, commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright originally to design a house, and that didn't work out. And so they went to Lautner, and then what happened? Well, they had, yeah, they contracted Frank Lloyd Wright in, I believe, 36. And they were still working with him. Like, the last letter of correspondence I found and the last canceled check to Frank Lloyd Wright that I found was from 1945.

28:52Okay. So they were unable to build because of World War II, so it just put it on hold. But they were still moving forward with going with Wright all the way through the war. And they had met Lautner through Wright because he was his superintendent out in L.A. So all three of them were actually up at the property talking about the Wright house. And during the war, my grandparents had become friends with Lautner. And he did a renovation of my grandfather's doctor's office, which included, he also designed a desk for my grandfather's office that was then built by Manuel Sandoval, who was Frank Lloyd Wright's, like, go-to woodworker.

29:39Yeah. He was on the team that broke ground at Fallingwater. But then by the end of the war, my grandparents had my dad and my uncle. So the one-bedroom design from Wright wasn't big enough anymore. And redesigns would have cost more than they could afford and taken longer than they wanted it to take. So Wright bought his design back and gave his blessing to use Lautner, which I think he also did with the Bell House. Okay.

30:09I think that one was also a passed off after the war from Wright to Lautner, just because Wright's workload after the war was huge. How long did your grandparents live in the house? They both died here. So my grandfather passed in 93, the day after my bar mitzvah. And my grandmother passed in 95. That's one hell of a bar mitzvah you must have had. There was actually a meeting with my parents and the rabbi the day of my bar mitzvah that morning because they thought my grandfather was going to die during my service.

30:43And they wanted the rabbi's kind of guidance on should we go ahead with the service or should we postpone it? And he said, well, when was the last time you brought David to visit with his grandfather? And they said yesterday. Then he said, well, is there anything that can be done? No. And how important is it for your grandfather that David be bar mitzvahed? And they said, very. And he said, well, I think we do the service.

31:16Don't tell David. So I had no idea that my parents were sitting there thinking, my grandfather is going to be dead by the time we get out of the service. Wow. But he held until the following morning and then let go. And when did your grandmother pass away? Two years later. Two years later. Yeah. So Lautner died in 94. And he came over here and planted a ponderosa in the yard for my grandfather and gave my grandmother a copy of his book, which, I mean, I think it was 50, 40 or 50 copies had been printed before he passed.

31:56And he brought one over to my grandmother, inscribed to her. We found it among the 30,000 pounds of garbage in pristine condition. And the inscription, I think, said to Allison, to you and Eddie, all those years, real friendship, so rare, love, John. Wow. And it was, yeah. Now, all the 30,000 pounds, that didn't come from your grandparents, did it? No, that does not include my grandparents' art and antiquities collection, their furniture.

32:29Their books, any of that. My uncle married a woman who was an abusive alcoholic hoarder. And that was the source of the 30,000 pounds. So they inherited the house from your grandparents? My grandparents put it into a bypass trust. Okay. So my brother and I were the beneficiaries. My uncle was the first successor trustee. So he could live here, and if he needed money, he could sell items from the trust.

33:03But it never was passed directly to him as far as ownership. So when he passed, then it goes to me and my brother. Okay. And is your brother part of this project now to fix it up? No. He lives in Boston, and he's a senior programmer for Google. And, you know, his life is on the East Coast, and, you know, he loves this house. We both grew up coming here every week. But, no, he's not in the building world and everything.

33:34So we are forming an LLC together, so we don't have to divide any of our grandparents' estate, because we do want to keep it all intact. And then at some point, I'll buy him out of those shares. Is there any kind of preservation easement on the house currently? It's a cultural historical monument, which means it's subject to the Secretary of Interior's guidelines. But other than that, there are no easements or anything like that. Okay. Because, you know, that doesn't protect the house at all, really. No. Okay.

34:04No, our ultimate plan is, I mean, you know, we want to ultimately get it on the national historical, you know, building. And I know there are other things that I can put in place for when we both are gone. My feeling now is that to pick two or potentially three organizations that I can leave the ownership to for it to be a museum. And as long as I can, you know, also build up enough of an endowment to go with it, that it will cover the maintenance costs and things like that.

34:40I feel like the Gamble House is a pretty good template. Yes. The Green and Green House in Pasadena. Yeah. That was originally left to, I think, USC and the city of Pasadena. You know, I want to pick one organization for the ethos and then one organization that will have the means and infrastructure to continue maintenance and make sure that the money stays solvent. Now, Elizabeth, you've been the public face of this project through Instagram and other places.

35:13What did the two of you encounter when you finally took possession of the house? Oh, I had never been up here or in this house until we could.

Clearing the house and saving the wood

35:26David was coming up and fixing odds and ends as much as he could, but there was so much stuff in here that it was really hard. But I had never been here until the person had been, you know, taken away. And yeah, it was crazy. I mean... Is this like waist deep kind of stuff? I would say like four feet. Four feet. Well, four feet of garbage everywhere, like in every room, in some rooms higher, like particularly in the bedroom that the, you know, the poor mentally ill woman lived.

36:02Her room was six feet tall of garbage. And there were pathways in between everything. And the smell was something I will never forget. Well, you know, it was all closed in. So it was just so musty and dusty and, you know, all those smells had nowhere to go for a really long time. Yeah. So, yeah. And, you know, I'd never seen rats that up close before.

36:36Some funny interactions with rats. I was cleaning out the refrigerator and it's turned off. It was used as like a cabinet. Yeah. So I open, I'm going to clean out this refrigerator. So I open it and a little rat just popped his head up and looked at me like, what are you doing? And I was like, what are you doing? And then, of course, we both ran away. But, yeah, some things I never thought that I would experience. Now, what was the bulk of the 30,000 pounds of stuff?

37:09Was it newspapers or magazines or what was it? I'd say it was an even mix of like mail, newspapers, that kind of normal accumulation. But then there was also like the myriad of short-lived hobbies that she had. So knitting was a big one. That proved to be the most problematic. How come? With a rat infestation. The garbage, it was these like three to four foot walls.

37:40It was layers of garbage. So it would be like mail and then newspapers. But then there would also be like a layer of used diapers. And then more mail. But through all of it, rats had pulled the yarn. So the reason the knitting became so problematic is because they had pulled yarn through all of these layers. So it became like a spider web inside the layers.

38:11So using a shovel was impossible because you'd be trying to lift up the whole room because it was all basically woven yarn. We would use a shovel to sort of avalanche part of it. And then we had to pick it up by hand. But actually, I think that kind of turned out to be a good thing because we did find a lot of David's grandparents' antiquities that if we would have just shoveled it, we probably would have missed more.

38:41Yeah.

38:42Now, once you got everything out, what are the big challenges that you find in the house? What has to really be fixed and worked on? I mean, everything except the structural bents and the majority of the brickwork needs work. Like the bents are still level and true. That right there is enormous because it is the structure. Yeah. All the electrical system needs to be redone. And there's still a little bit of plumbing repair to get done.

39:13But the majority is really just like painstakingly dismantling everything so I can clean and properly refinish and resurface all the wood. But just this last weekend, we were up in Arcata, Northern California, just north of Eureka, and we were able to secure all of the old growth redwood that we'll need. Because there is a substantial amount of the redwood from the house that has carpenter bees or wood rot or just from not having been treated.

39:50Yeah. Baking in the sun. Like a lot of the trellis pieces in the skylight have really, really pronounced bows in them now just because they dried irregularly in place. So they bent, but we were able to get amazing beams. These were from a tree that was taken down in the early 1900s. So it would have been brought out of the woods on a steam donkey and then to train.

40:21But the pieces we got came from the upper support beams of the silo at the Arcata Redwood Company. Okay. Which is pretty neat. So we actually have the history of the wood to use to replace it because it is, I mean, it's extraordinary. Like in an eight-inch thick section, there's over 200 grain lines. That could have been a much bigger challenge to find acceptable material. The only one that is equally challenging are the ceiling panels are all quarter-inch mahogany veneered plywood.

40:59You can't find that at the Home Depot. No. I'm looking at most likely I'm going to manufacture my own veneer and do the setups myself with a vacuum table just because otherwise, if I had to have these panels made, they'd cost $800 to $900 a piece. And, you know, I need 35 of them. And if I'd make them myself, I can make them for maybe $300 a piece.

41:29And it will have been, you know, handmade. Yeah. Given the history of the house and my grandparents building it and, you know, what I learned about Edgardo Contini, the engineer, was that a huge part of his career, he devoted towards really pushing for reusing materials. And, like, he said that there was no reason to bring in a bulldozer when you're taking down a house. You should be dismantling the houses, reusing anything that's usable.

42:00So I look at that of, like, using salvaged redwood and making my own veneers rather than spending to have them factory made. All of those things, to me, seem to be more in line with how the house was created. Now, Elizabeth, what about the windows? I know that any mid-century modern house is going to have some window issues. The windows. You know, surprisingly, these windows have held up very well. And I think it's because, like David said, the base of the house hasn't moved, thank goodness.

42:34But, yes, all of the windows are going to be replaced. All of them. Just because the advances in glass now. You know, if any of these broke and fell, there'd be shards everywhere. So we're definitely going to just redo all the glass, have it be tempered glass so that if something breaks, it won't hurt us. Yes. You know, take off a finger or something. But it's so pretty. It feels like you live in a goldfish bowl in a really good way.

43:06Because you can see everything. Yeah, it's very unique. But, man, it's really, really cool. Because it's like floor to ceiling window. Not just like you peek out. It's like the whole wall is a wall of windows.

Ventilation and restoration timeline

43:24This is not a huge house, right? This is a very modest-sized house. How many square feet? It's 2,600. So for one single story, it's not tiny. Most of that square footage is the main living area. You know, that's a good half of the house is the living room and fireplace. The bedrooms are all small. Well, the one all the way in the back and the one that's excavated into the bedrock, that's the largest, which was my dad and uncle's childhood bedroom.

43:59The other two are small, modest bedrooms. But the kitchen is huge. And the living room is huge. You've got those wonderful Lautner entrances that come into the living room where you're going to have the party, right? Yep. Yep. There are three pivoting doors. And on the opposite side are two hinged doors. And when you open them all up, the other benefit is, you know, we're on top of Mount Washington. So every afternoon, the ocean breeze gets just channeled right through here.

44:34And if you open up the doors and windows after like four o'clock, when the temperature starts to drop, the wind just clears the hot air out of the house. It's pretty amazing how well ventilated the house is and how much it cools it down just by opening it up, which is good because air conditioning, a giant room of glass is not really possible. Now, what is your estimate for finishing this thing? How long is it going to take you?

45:04There are a lot of variables, mainly around the few subcontractors I do need. Like I need some concrete stuff and there is some brickwork. And this time in L.A., building is at a premium. So finding subcontractors, it can take longer because, you know, there are thousands of houses being rebuilt right now. But barring major hangups, I'm hoping it'll be in the like year and a half to two year range.

45:38Okay. I've already been able to source the difficult to source materials like that's a big waiting period and milling it myself, doing all of that. I don't have to wait on other shops. So it really comes down to like doing a new roof, going through the permit process for that. That can you never know how long those delays are going to go. But it's hard to predict how long it's going to take me to remove the redwood siding because there's not a huge amount of it.

46:10But the only way to remove it without damaging the existing siding is really to drill the nail head off and drive the shaft of the nail the rest of the way through. And then you're just left with the impression of the nail head and the hole of the shaft fit in. But it doesn't midge the rest of the paneling because it's, you know, redwood's so soft. And these nails were hammered into dug fur studs. So it's like if you try and pry a nail out, you're going to break the redwood.

46:42But I found with these ones, you know, because, you know, they're not hardened nails. So a good drill bit will take the head off it pretty quick. So I've adapted a centering drill jig so it can fit the full height so I can get to all the nails but keep it perfectly level and square. And I can set depth so I can't go too far and all that. But that'll take a while. I just want to thank you both for taking this on because it would be, you know,

47:13too easy for a house like this to just sort of go away and get destroyed and have some giant monster house put up on its site. But the fact that you're taking the time and effort and care to bring it back is very award worthy. Oh, thank you. I grew up playing in this house every week. So there's, you know, there's so much history in this house, especially of it's really like a transitional house from the Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian into John Lautner really creating his own voice.

47:50And like, because throughout the house, you can see so many elements of both. You can see Frank Lloyd Wright elements and you can see things that Lautner would do over and over in the future. So it is, it deserves to be preserved, you know. Elizabeth, is there a lifetime movie in the works about this whole adventure? Because I have some drama scenes here. I mean, you and the rats. Um, no, I mean, I'm also a writer, so I am writing, but I write kids books.

48:24And, um, there's definitely going to be some elements of the psychology of what can happen to the human brain when, like, the OCD of hoarding or the fear of connecting with others. And, like, what leads to this mental block or mental illness? I've definitely been thinking about it a lot, and it will definitely show up in one of my characters in my next book.

48:55Well, again, thank you both for stewarding the house. It's a pleasure to meet you. I hope to meet you in person sometime. Absolutely, yeah. Let me know anytime you're in L.A. And as long as it's not, you know, life-threateningly precarious up here, you're more than welcome to come by. You can see this house and all of John Lautner's houses at usmarnis.org slash lautner.

The Architecture and Design Film Festival

49:19Kyle Bergman noticed that architects are great at talking to each other and not so great at talking to everyone else. So, in 2008, he started the Architecture and Design Film Festival to close that gap, betting that film could capture something photographs never quite do, the feeling of actually moving through a space. What began as a small trial run in Vermont has since traveled from New York to Seoul, and this year will be featured at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.

49:49Here's Kyle Bergman with the details. Kyle, welcome back to the show. It's so great to have you back every year talking about the exciting series of films coming up, opening in New York in October. What have you got on the buffet for us? Well, George, it's always great to talk to you. I feel like we've been doing this for a number of years. Since the 80s. Yeah, I know. And so it feels like, okay, the festival must be happening because I'm talking to George again, so this is fantastic. I mean, I can't believe it. It's our 18th season of doing these.

50:21But when I first started, I thought it was going to be one and done. I get it out of my system. And you know how this goes, George. You start doing something, you're like, okay, that's pretty fun. Maybe I can do it better. I'll try to fine tune it and make it better. You know, I don't know if it gets any better, but I'm having just as much fun. So I'm excited to let you know about what's coming up this year. You're doing a great job. Well, you know, people seem to like it. So it's good. And I have, you know what? I have fun doing it. I watch a lot of films each year, over 300. And we select about 15 or so. And even the ones we don't select, I learn a lot and I enjoy watching them, although I wouldn't make you have to sit through them all.

50:58Here's what we have on top. Actually, this year is super exciting. We're going to have our opening night, October 12th in New York. First time ever, opening night is going to be at MoMA. Wow. And we're really, really excited about that. We've done some other screenings at MoMA, but never for opening night. And we have a fantastic film. We're going to have a world premiere of the film Mundo Fragile. It's about this year's Pritzker Prize winner, Smeljan Radek. The film is made by Ila Beka and Luis Limon, who you know have made many great films. They met for a week and Smeljan showed him some of the most things that are important to him architecturally in Chile, in his home country.

51:35And it's the first time he's going to be in New York since winning the Pritzker. What's cool about the film is Ila and Luis, they knew him. They loved his work before he became as well-known as he is now, have this really intimate conversation with him traveling around Chile. It's a fantastic film. And we'll show it at other nights during the festival, and we'll take it to other cities around the world. But it is a beautiful way to open up the festival. But let me tell you about some of the other films that are exciting. We have also a world premiere film called Five Living Buildings by Renzo Piano.

52:09And it's a Brooklyn filmmaker who is really interested how people who use the buildings and what they see in the building, what they think about the building. So it's really a user perspective of Five Buildings by Renzo Piano. And looking how, not only how like that moment that it's designed and kind of handed off to the public, how the public and how the users look at it. It's a great, great look on Renzo's work. Another one is called Bauhaus Forever. It's a German film by Nico Weber. She's a Berlin-based artist and filmmaker.

52:41And she looks at the Bauhaus archive building, but also kind of goes back and talks about why the Bauhaus started. And it really comes out of Gropius' horrible experience in World War I and realizing that something different, something better has to come out of it. And the Bauhaus is really a reaction to World War I. And it's really a fascinating way to look at it. And it's really this experimental, how do we rethink the world is really what the Bauhaus was about at its core level.

53:11And the film talks about that and talks about the history about it. And it brings it right into the present with the new building that's being done, the renovation for the building of the Bauhaus archives. Nico is a fantastically creative and courageous filmmaker. And the film is just, it rocks. I love it. Oh, I can't wait to see it. Yeah. No, it's right up your alley. Another one right up your alley and that you were involved in is Googie.

Highlight films at the festival

53:36So we have a film on Googie architecture, which is, you know, Alan Hess wrote a book about Googie architecture a long time ago and put Googie on the map. And Googie, for those of you who are not familiar with them, it's really 1950s, 1960s, kind of Jetson-y, space-age-y, Southern California, futuristic-looking architecture. McDonald's would be Googie. Some of the, I don't know, do you have any favorite Googie? You know, Bob's Big Boy. Yeah. Was that, in a way, Norm's and other diners?

54:07Yeah. Today, the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles is a little bit evocative of that. Yeah. So the film is a nice history of Googie, you know, and made by Jake Gorst, who's made a number of films that we showed over the years. So I think it's definitely one that will grab people's attention. Another film is The Tower That Built a City, and it's about the CN Tower in Toronto, which is going to be turned 50 this year. Wow, 50. Yeah, 50, I know. The film talks to some people who lived in Toronto more than 50 years ago and how that building really changed the city and what it brought to the city.

54:43And it talks about how a piece of architecture can change how people look at the city. I mean, the Eiffel Tower did that for Paris. The Sydney Opera House did that for Sydney in Australia. And I think the Empire State Building did that for New York. The Space Needle for Seattle. Space Needle for Seattle, which is kind of right up with CN Tower. And CN Tower was the tallest building in the world for, I don't know, 12 or 15 years. It's got a great story about how it was made. It was really daring from a structural engineering perspective. You know, they were pretty sure it was going to work, but they maybe weren't 100% positive, but it clearly has worked.

55:20So I think that's one that people really gravitate towards. And one that I really want to point out is called Out of the Picture. It's a Belgian-made film. And it's a story about people not getting credit who deserve credit. And this is specifically about women in the architectural field. And the film is a feminist film dealing specifically with architects. But really, it launches with Denise Scott Brown not getting the Pritzker, which kind of comes full circle from this year's opening night film, Wounded Fragile, about this year's Pritzker winner.

55:50And when Robert Venturi got the Pritzker in 1991, they didn't give it to his business partner, OEGOL partner in the firm. So Denise Scott Brown didn't get it. It was a controversy. Denise and Bob talked about it at the time. And they were like, well, even though we're not getting it, it's too important for Bob to turn it down. So they decided to do it anyhow. It was good for their business and their career. But it's really a horrible thing. And it talks about Eileen Gray not getting credit and so many other women in our profession who did not get the credit they deserved. And, you know, it's obviously wrong and we all know it, but it's having a film that highlights it, brings it to the forefront of everyone's mind.

56:27And, you know, we've got to make sure that that's our past but not our future. So this year you're going to open at MoMA. Where are the films going to be the rest of the week? So after MoMA, we're down in the East Village in New York at the Village East by Angelica on 12th Street and 2nd Avenue. So that's the New York, all of it for five days after MoMA. And then after New York, a couple of weeks later, November 4th through 7th, we go to Toronto at the TIFF Lightbox. A week later, November 10th through 15th, we're in Vancouver.

56:58Had a little breather. Then beginning of January, January 13th through 17th, we're in Mumbai. After that, beginning of February 4th through 6th, our first time ever, we're going to be in Detroit. All right. Yeah, at Wayne State University downtown. And then we go to Chicago, February 18th through 21st. And then this year we're not doing Los Angeles, but we are going to do in the Bay Area in San Francisco, March 18th through 21st, up in Mill Valley at the Smith and Sequoia Movie Theaters.

57:29We're going to bring the festival up there. So we'll end the season there. So if you're in any of those cities or have friends in any of those cities, all the information, the dates and the films are available on the website, which is adfilmfest.com. And the best way to keep track of everything year in and year out is to sign up for our newsletter, which you can do on our website. We try not to send out too much information, just enough, so you know what's happening. Now, Kyle, I was watching other night on very late night TV, a classic film called Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

58:04It's rated as one of the worst films ever produced. And it's so bad, it's good. I was wondering, is there a really bad architecture film out there that you've watched in these hundreds or thousands of films that's just so awful, it's good? You know, there must be. I watch so many of them. I probably hopefully delete those from my internal hard drive. But, you know, as I preview the films, I get into them.

58:36Even though I know they're pretty bad, I'm not going to show it. I'm kind of looking for the nugget in there or something that's good. And, you know, I've watched preview films a number of times where the first time through I said, nah, that's not for the festival. But I said, I need to take a second look. I'll take a second look. And I was like, oh, no, actually, there's some good stuff in there. So I can't think of those horrible ones. But when I do, I'll bring them back for next year for our conversation. How's that? Well, very good. And, of course. And next year. Yes. Next year is, I've been told, the next year is the 100th anniversary of Metropolis.

59:09The famous film from the 1920s that predicted our future. It did. And what do you think? Did they get it right or wrong? They got a little bit of it. A little bit right. Yeah. A little bit wrong. It is a great film. Go to the website at adfilmfest.com and get all the details. Get on the newsletter and come to see these films in a city near you. Kyle, thanks so much for coming back this year. George, thanks so much for having me. And for anyone who's listening, if you come to the festival and you've heard this on U.S. Modernist Radio, let me know.

59:42Because I love to talk to everyone and see how they find out about it. And, George, thanks for all the good work you're doing, keeping modernism alive and well. And keeping everyone informed about it, it's just amazing what you've put together over the years. That was George with Kyle Bergman.

Foster dogs and jazz songwriting

59:59Nicole Zorita spent her teenage years as a competitive soccer player until an injury during a match in France ended that path. Around the same time, her high school music director talked her into sitting in with a local college big band and jazz took hold from there. That path eventually led to a 2024 Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album for a record made up entirely of her own songs. Her new album pushes that same instinct even further. Here's George's conversation with Nicole Zorita.

1:00:33Hi, Nicole. Welcome back on the show. Thanks so much for having me back. Great to see you. I have learned that in addition to cultivating jazz, you are also cultivating pit bulls. Tell me about that. Oh, man, we've been doing dog rescue. My husband, Dan Pugach, and I have been fostering dogs since 2011. When I discovered that there's high kill shelters in New York City, I saw a dog that was on the euthanasia list that was only nine months old. And it was a pit lab mix.

1:01:04And I didn't know that they, unfortunately, have to euthanize a lot of animals all at the same time. I mean, for, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands per year. So I thought it was a one-time thing. So I drove to the shelter and adopted the dog, even though I lived in a no-dogs-allowed apartment in Queens. But that's also how Dan and I ended up getting married, because he was just my friend at the time and also my driver. You found him in a shelter? I pretty much.

1:01:31I found shelter at his house because his landlord didn't care if we had dogs and didn't even care about anything. So I was spending a lot of time at his place because suddenly I had a dog and nowhere to go. Well, that's a good story. Nicole, you've got a new album out called The Devil I Knew, and we're going to hear this first song, Won't Make It Out Alive. Tell me about it. I wrote that song about that moment where you see a red flag, but you're like, ooh, red's my favorite color. And so you kind of go, you go towards something, even though, you know, it's a bad idea.

1:02:07Yeah. And ironically, the whole record is about the narrator eventually realizing that they are the devil in their own story. They're the villain in their own story. So you think you're talking about someone else in the first song of the record, but you're actually talking about yourself. So this is about bad life choices. Certainly.

1:02:27That redhead in the Ford Pinto with the two brothers and the tattoo. Yeah, I know her. You sure do. And I think everybody can see themselves in that if they allow themselves to see that clearly. Here's Nicole with Won't Make It Out Alive. Won't Make It Out Alive. Won't Make It Out Alive.

1:02:51Won't Make It Out Alive. Flickr of danger With a gleam behind those eyes Familiar stranger Known them since I first learned a lie Feels like a freight train Tearing up and down my spine I'm barely breathing Step by step We're out of time

1:03:21But if it keeps on coming If it keeps on coming If it keeps on coming I won't make it out alive I won't make it out alive A voice like velvet Laced with smoke, whiskey and cash

1:03:54A laugh like thunder And a big temper to match One foot on a bed post And the others at the door A self-rinsing warning Babe, keep your ear to the floor But if it keeps on coming If it keeps on coming If it keeps on coming

1:04:25I won't hold back anymore Oh, and now we're keeping score Well, a deck of cards I'm dunking a plane Another game to die But I'll risk it today I'll give you my say If you deal with me Your whole race Oh, and now we're keeping score

1:04:57Oh, and now we're keeping score Okay Okay Okay Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah We'll be right back.

1:05:41We'll be right back.

1:06:11We'll be right back.

1:06:41We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

1:07:41We'll be right back.

1:08:11We'll be right back.

1:08:41We'll be right back.

The Devil I Knew and touring

1:09:11It's not a breakup album. People think, oh, Nicole, you and Dan have been married for 10 years. How did you write this record? I'm like, listen, I've been alive, though. I mean, after all, you found him in a shelter. I did find him in a shelter. I did find him in a shelter. And I like people in a cage sometimes. But man, yeah, I've been alive, though, for 41 years. So you don't have to tell a story as it happens. Here's two steps back. I can't walk down 52nd street.

1:09:47I can't walk down 52nd street. I can't walk down 52nd street. I can't walk down 52nd street. I can't walk down 52nd street. I park on 11th avenue. All I see is us in cars smoking cigars.

1:10:17Wishing the world could know what only we knew. Do you miss me, too? I can't walk down 52nd street. I can't walk down 52nd street. I can't walk down 52nd street. I can't walk through the village or get coffee on the Upper West.

1:10:48And if I drink my favorite martini, I'm flooded with the memories. of secrets we kept Do you miss me yet?

1:11:06Do you miss me yet?

1:11:14It's the overlap Try to move forward Slipping two steps back Time cannot rewind The past so there's overlap Between what we built And what's collapsed The overlap I can't step in hotel bars

1:11:57Or drag faces in a carnival of crowds And when the leaves begin to grow and spring I feel the sting I'm struggling to accept what I can help Do you miss me now? Do you miss me now? Now

1:12:28It's the overlap Try to move forward Slipping two steps back If time can I rewind The past so there's overlap Between what we built And what's collapsed Oh, which way is out

1:12:58When we're all lost in the air We're so innocent Did you miss me then? In the days before When we were much more than pretend Did you miss me then? Miss me then? Miss me then? Then it's the open land

1:13:41The past so there's overlap The past so there's overlap The past so there's overlap Between what we built

1:14:15And what's closed The overlap Like Boo Then after The past so there's a glow If it goes through The past so there's overlap Based on the future I affably The past so there's reason Thank you.

1:15:11So what have you got lined up performing-wise coming up? We've been in the middle of a pretty substantial world tour. We just got back from Japan and Taiwan and China and Hungary. We went back to Europe as well, and then we did all the album release shows during the summer. But now we have the West Coast tour lined up. We're going to head over to Indianapolis, to Cleveland, and to Nashville.

1:15:44Then we play in New York on September 30th at DRAM. And then we go back to Europe via Turkey. Yeah. There's a lot of touring coming up to release this record. I'm super excited about it. That is quite a world tour. I mean, you're just right up there with Taylor Swift going from continent to continent. We're going to India in November, so don't forget that. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming back. And your music is wonderful. And we love having you on the show. It's so great to see you, George.

1:16:14Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening.

Show credits and sponsors

1:16:17U.S. Modernist Radio is underwritten by the Brent R. Harris Charitable Trust, restorer of Richard Neutra's Kauffman Desert House in Palm Springs, and six other houses in California. By the Ife Jones Conservancy, preserving the legacy of modernist architecture in Northwest Arkansas, ifejonesconservancy.org. And by Diane Bald and the Budman Family, restoring significant architecture in Toronto, Los Angeles, Malibu, and Palm Springs. Visit usmodernist.org's massive archives to listen to past shows,

1:16:49discover documentation of 30,000 significant modernist houses, and access six million pages of classic 20th century architecture magazines. U.S. Modernist Radio is produced by Soundtracks Recording Studios in Raleigh, North Carolina. Our theme song was performed by George Smart and Robinson Earl, with guest research by Bobby Morris. Got a guest to suggest for our show? Writer at bobby at usmodernist.org. U.S. Modernist Radio is a production of Modernist Archive Incorporated, a non-profit educational archive for the documentation, preservation,

1:17:21and promotion of modernist residential design. I'm Tom Guild. George and I'll be back soon with another down-to-earth edition of U.S. Modernist Radio. Going down. I'll be back soon with another down-to-earth edition of U.S. Modernist Radio. I'll be back soon with another down-to-earth edition of U.S. Modernist Radio. I'll be back soon with another down-to-earth edition of U.S. Modernist Radio. I'll be back soon with another down-to-earth edition of U.S. Modernist Radio. I'll be back soon with another down-to-earth edition of U.S. Modernist Radio.