LIVE! NOON! WEDNESDAY APRIL 16: WPKN 89.5fm Streaming wpkn.org

In a strange housing market, the zeitgeist of the moment is depression. High interest rates, low supply, insane prices make anywhere around a city bizarrely inaccessible. This means building is harder, too. But some persist: Why?

Why would you have the courage to risk so much time and money in such a market? Well, the home is at the core of our lives, for anyone – for some it is a place of safety from the street, for others its their most expensive household expense, for others where they live is their core it is their biggest investment, for others, their homes are their biggest liability.

For for a bunch of us where we live is part of who we are: our values, our hopes, what we find beautiful. For those of us who cannot escape the reality of our devotion to creating our place in the world, the only option is building it. Three intrepid home creators, two through COVID, share their stories on HOME PAGE RADIO: JOIN US!

LIVE! NOON! Wednesday, March 19 WPKN 89.5fm STREAMING wpkn.org

We all live somewhere. Our homes are as fundamental as our clothing, our food, just living. In the cultural shake-out of the 21st century, organized religion in America has taken a hit in membership, attendance, and relevance – but that change has been accompanied by the statistical revelation that over 80% of us are “spiritual” – with more and more of us saying that they are “spiritual but not religious.”

If homes are just reflections of us, and we, as humans, are “spiritual” do our homes reflect that aspect of who we are? Are our homes “spiritual” to us? Did the sequestration of the pandemic simultaneously remove us from our places of worship, but connect us to our homes in a spiritual perspective that was missing? How do our homes reflect that spiritual connection?

In our homes, we hang mezuzah’s, crucifixes, even portraits of Jesus, we light candles – but beyond icons and rituals, how do our homes reflect the spiritual reality of the human condition? Some great guests reflect on this question.

Everyone has a home, but some think about spiritual lives in a secular world. Joining Home Page are those who think about how we live domestically and faithfully. David Zahl, is a husband, father and homeowner and co-created Mockingbird Ministries. Yodan Rofe is a professor, author and is dedicated to exploring “Living Architecture” with the philosophy of Christopher Alexander. Steve Mouzon is an architect, writer, and new urbanist who has long focused on cultural traditions in design, particularly those in the south

Wednesday, February 19, 2025 12 Noon WPKN 89.5 FM wpkn.org

Censorship comes in many forms. We censor ourselves at family gatherings on politics. We cannot say prohibited words on WPKN radio shows. We even try to limit what can be taught, read at a library, or spoken about in public forums.

For the second time in four years, the Federal Government will try to censor what it builds. The first time the end of the Trump Administration the desire to limit new federal construction to “classical” and “traditional” aesthetics. That declaration was rescinded immediately upon the Biden Administration took office. The second Trump Administration re-wrote in matching language for this declaration – announced one day after the President’s isecond nauguration:

“Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government…”

This is code language for “No Contemporary, Modernist or Non-Traditional Building shall be built for federally financed building projects.”

The “Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture” will be revised so that the General Services Administration will recommend rejection of any architectural design to the President of the United States that is not “regional. traditional and classical”. Who decides what is “regional, traditional and classical”? Friends of the President.

Why does a new President do aesthetic censorship? Why is there an immediate sense that Political Correctness now extends to Aesthetic Correctness?

Three great thought leaders in architecture will talk about Censorship In Architecture In 2025 – architects Michael Imber of Austin, Robert Orr and Peter Newman of Connecticut.

Wednesday, January 15, 2025 12 Noon WPKN 89.5 FM wpkn.org

We are in a time of change: climate, society, politics, technology: and buildings always adapt: but in the instant exposure of the Internet, is there anything “new” in how we conceive of buildings and architecture?  Rather than performance (resilience, sustainability, energy efficiency) is there a different way building design approaches how humans as individuals and as cultures use now than in the 20th century? 

Will the next homes just be “better”or will we rethink how we use them

Suburbia was not a personal or social reality before the full flower of The Industrial Revolution: will there be a new way we house ourselves?

Technology has always changed buildings, but buildings respond with what we know, not by rethinking design. Air Conditioning to reduce heat fully changed how buildings by sealing them and thus how humans interact with the climate. Cars ended how distance shaped communities, so distances between us spread and buildings increased in size to house them. 

Wars and work and worship are leaving the baseline requirement of human gathering: Will the future create a baseline of isolation in how we inhabit our buildings and communities?

In times of discovery (the Renaissance and creation of America) humanity – cultures have completely embraced ancient, familiar aesthetics – Classical Rationalization of new ideas of culture. If the technological explosion is as changing, will we be looking to the pastas a way to feel safe in architecture when society is in radical change?   How will our homes be affected?

Four great guests will help us:  Martin Pedersen is a New York based writer, critic and editor and is the executive director of the Common Edge Collaborative, Todd Gould has been a broker/ owner/ realtor for 27 years, Leigh Whiteman Is The Whiteman Team at William Raveis Real Estate, and Clay Chapman is a design/build mason who founded “Hope for Architecture,” a structural masonry revival.

Wednesday, December 18, 2024 12 Noon WPKN 89.5 FM wpkn.org

The year is about to end. We are past COVID and the election. We are way beyond the awe of seeing our first Smart Phone, let alone the thrill of posting meaningless internet fodder. The advent of the 21st Century is old news.

It is not yet the new year, new presidency, or anywhere near knowing how our culture will connect post lingering analog vestiges. We are more in between than most moments. But our humanity has not changed. We eat, sleep, love – and we all live somewhere.

Our homes, where we live, are as constant as the rest our our culture is in transition. We may be urbanizing, we may be rejecting McMansions, we may be re-defining “family”, but we will always need a place to eat, sleep, wash and feel safe; The Home.

So it’s a good time to think about Our Homes: and Home Page gathers voices from diverse voices who help create those homes. Steve Mouzon from Alabama, architect and co-founder of the Congress of New Urbanism architects and from Seattle Susan Ingham, of Building Beauty and John DeForest of DeForest Architects and architect Ross Chapin FAIA who wrote “Pocket Neighborhoods” also from Washington state all share the unique and unversal reality of the home in everyone’s life. Join us!

Wednesday November 20, 2024 12 Noon WPKN 89.5 FM wpkn.org

Everyone has a place to live, but here in Connecticut and Long Island the costs of our places to live are extreme – so extreme that the culture around us is inundated with Real Estate Media: House sales and market rate rentals are now part of our daily media diet. What about the huge number of us who simply cannot afford the homes shown in all those ads, magazines and websites?

Creating affordable places to live is a mirror image of effort to the Real Estate Marketing Machine all around us. Rather than making a profit, those creating housing that is accessible for everyone search for funding from every imaginable source. Every level of government has ways to finance and organize the creation and management of homes. Private not-for-profit institutions seek those funds and generate private donations – and help organize thousands of volunteers to create the homes our economy does not.

The two systems of home creation – for-profit and not-for-profit – have the same outcome: creating homes for people – but the motivations are opposite to each other. We live in a world that celebrates the high value of market rate home investment for those who can buy a home or those creating market rate apartments, while millions find housing only because others focus on limiting the costs required to create those homes.

Two worlds of houses – and this month HOME Page focuses on those in the largely uncelebrated world of creating safe affordable places to live here in Connecticut and on Long Island. We will have Paul Bailey an architect who has toiled in the field of housing for everyone, Dennis Michaels, Construction Director of Habitat of Greater New Haven and Jim Paley is the Executive Director of Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven.

Wednesday October 16, 2024, 12 Noon WPKN 89.5 FM www.wpkn.org

A century of top-down architectural determination is over. Regimes of conferring worth via station and prestige have been replaced with the number of “likes” and “followers” accruing as if the entire world is one polling station. We have reached intellectual democratization, where popularity trumps insights (good or bad) – our world is becoming unending popularity contests and beauty pageants, where everyone is the judge and the contestant – “the most eyeballs wins”. So much so that the remaining organizations are trying to ban Tik Tok, control Artificial Intelligence and social media and limit access based on age. But the cow has left the barn.

As a result, in architecture, the Starchitect, the image of the Power of Style has left the building.

All media is losing its editorial guardrails as the internet’s overwhelming universal, free and open access to exposing every and any aspect of everyone’s life becomes the basis of cultural evolution. The elitist sensibility of anointing “important work” in controlled, highly exclusive journalistic exposure of architecture is collapsing.

Popular culture critic Kate Wagner voiced the power of democratic revolution in media: “We all live in the world. We all deserve to participate in it. We all also deserve to see our own lives reflected in architectural media, not just the spaces of the rich and famous. That requires reshaping everything, even vernacular or popular design media culture.”

Today we have two people who know the past, present and perhaps can see a future for architecture. Martin Pedersen is a New Orleans based writer, critic and editor, and is the executive director of the Common Edge Collaborative. John Connell is the co – founder of  Yestermorrow, an Architect and Urbanist.