Aug 20 2026
Born on August 20, 1910, in Kirkkonummi, Finland, Eero Saarinen became one of the architects who gave mid-century America its most memorable vision of the future. The soaring Gateway Arch in St. Louis, the sweeping TWA Flight Center at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, the dramatic terminal at Washington Dulles International Airport, and …
Jun 08 2026
Born on this day, June 8, 1867, in Richland Center, Wisconsin, Frank Lloyd Wright became one of the most influential architects of the 20th century. Over a career spanning more than seven decades, he challenged assumptions about what an American building should look like, how rooms should connect to one another, and how architecture should …
May 24 2026
Born on this day, May 24, 1905, in Spokane, Washington, George Katsutoshi Nakashima became one of the most influential American furniture makers and woodworkers of the 20th century. His tables, chairs, benches, cabinets, and architectural spaces are immediately recognizable for their extraordinary respect for the materials from which they were made. A Nakashima table might …
Oct 18 2025
Born on October 18, 1903, in Zurich, Switzerland, Albert Frey became one of the architects most closely associated with Palm Springs and the development of Desert Modernism. He arrived in California with firsthand experience of European modernism, an enthusiasm for industrial materials, and a belief that architecture should respond intelligently to contemporary life. What he …
Jun 25 2025
Born on June 25, 1900, in New York City, Joseph Eichler became one of the most influential homebuilders of mid-century America without ever training as an architect. Instead, he was a developer with an unusually strong belief that ordinary families should be able to live in genuinely modern, architect-designed houses. At a time when much …
Apr 21 2025
Long before Seattle became internationally associated with coffee shops, grunge music, and technology companies, one extraordinary structure announced that the city intended to become part of the future. Rising 605 feet above Seattle, the Space Needle looks simultaneously like a tower, a rocket, and a flying saucer that has paused above the city. Its slender …
Apr 08 2025
Richard Neutra helped create one of the defining images of modern California: a low horizontal house of glass and steel, apparently floating between a swimming pool, a garden, and an enormous landscape beyond. Born in Vienna on April 8, 1892, Neutra carried the radical ideas of European modernism to Southern California, where sunlight, hillsides, desert …
Feb 13 2025
Imagine entering a room where the distinction between furniture, floor, walls, ceiling, lighting, and sculpture has almost disappeared. The carpet climbs into upholstered platforms. Curving forms rise from the floor like strange geological formations. Lamps glow inside fields of saturated red, orange, purple, and blue. There may be no conventional chair at all, because the …
Dec 18 2024
Few buildings capture the optimism of the Jet Age as perfectly as the Theme Building at Los Angeles International Airport. With enormous white arches sweeping over a circular glass structure, it looks like a flying saucer has landed in the middle of LAX—or perhaps like a spaceport designed for a future that people in 1961 …
Jun 19 2024
Drive through the older neighborhoods of Los Angeles and eventually you are likely to see one: a low, boxy apartment building hovering above an open row of carports, perhaps decorated with a starburst, mosaic panel, geometric screen, or a name written in swooping script. It might be called the Polynesian, the Capri, the Flamingo, the …
