New Angle: Voice

About New Angle: Voice

Beverly Willis is adding her voice to a new podcast featuring discussions about the lives and careers of female pioneers of American Architecture. Going beyond the scholarship of the award-winning website Pioneering Women of American Architecture, our podcast New Angle: Voice details the struggles and triumphs of six leading women who have personified achievement in a primarily male dominated field.

Publisher

Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation

Category

arts · history

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

6 Oct 2021

Latest episode

20 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

3 of 17 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   20 Oct 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Fighting Modernism: Elizabeth Gordon Defines the House Beautiful

   Host Alexandra Lange interviews architectural historian Monica Penick about Elizabeth Gordon's influential role in shaping American taste through House Beautiful magazine.

2. 

   15 Sept 2026TRANSCRIPT

   The Old Girls' Network: Eleanor Raymond and the Modern House

   Host Alexandra Lange interviews architecture historians about Eleanor Raymond's pioneering work and influence on modern design, revealing her impact despite societal barriers.

3. 

   27 Feb 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Lutah Maria Riggs Designs the American Riviera

   Today Montecito and Santa Barbara are associated with a number of women identifiable by a single name, from Gwyneth to Oprah to Meghan. But the look of the houses in those oceanfront cities – stucco arches, red tile floors, exposed beams — can be attributed to a woman architect also known by one name, Lutah. I'm your host, Alexandra Lange. Welcome to the latest episode of New Angle: Voice on the Ohio-born and California-bred architect Lutah Maria Riggs. Riggs was on track to be a teacher, one of few professions to welcome women in the early 20th century, when she won a scholarship to Berkeley by selling newspapers. Like Julia Morgan before her, she gained entry to the university's Beaux Arts influenced architecture program – one of only four women in her class. Also like Morgan, she was talented enough to capture the interest and mentorship of the head of the program, John Galen Howard, and a series of other older male architects who helped her launch her career and chaperoned her travel to Mexico, Spain, and other countries whose architecture was highly influential in California in the 1920s. Riggs's most famous public project, the Lobero Theater in downtown Santa Barbara, was directly influenced by a serendipitous stop in Spain. Traveling on her own, Riggs took advantage of the network of women's hotels and clubs available in those days. She was always up for a dance, and was even friends with Martha Graham when the modern dance pioneer spent time in Santa Barbara. Her work has helped define the indoor-outdoor, casual, one-story style that is most identified with southern California today. That has made her houses highly prized for their luxurious materials, swoon-worthy views, and easy living. Unlike many architects who focused on public commissions, many of her houses are still extant, and the real estate agents know what they've got. Zoe Saldana lives in a Lutah today, and architecture enthusiast Ellen DeGeneres has in the past. Riggs – who lived until the 1980s – continues to be one of Santa Barbara's most celebrated architects. Join us on the Gold Coast for "Lutah Maria Riggs Designs the American Riviera" ___ Special thanks in this episode to Volker Welter, Melinda Gandara, Gretchen Lieff, Nicole Hernandez, Cristal Clarke, Dawn Ziemer, and Krishnaprana and Vrajaprana at the Vedanta Center in Santa Barbara. The archival recordings of Lutah Maria Riggs are from her collection at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This podcast is brought to you by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation and produced by Brandi Howell.

4. 

   22 Aug 2025

   Not Only Survive, but Flourish: The Story of WSPA

   Hello, this is New Angle: Voice, the podcast about Pioneering Women in American Architecture brought to you by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation. I’m your new host, Alexandra Lange. Our latest episode describes the creation and experience of the Women’s School of Planning and Architecture, popularly known as WSPA, which ran for four summers from 1974 to 1979.   It completes a trilogy of episodes, including previous ones on the fantasy environments of architect Phyllis Birkby and the first exhibition on Women in American Architecture at the Brooklyn Museum, that ask and answer the question, How did architecture meet the feminist movement in the 1970s? WSPA was the brainchild of seven women, Leslie Kanes Weisman, Phyllis Birkby, Katrin Adam, Bobbie Sue Hood,  Ellen Perry Berkeley,  Marie Kennedy, and Joan Forrester Sprague. These women represented a mix of academic, professional, and practical experience. What they wanted to create was an educational curriculum, by women and for women, that freed architecture from the hierarchies of existing schools and practice. At their workshops, held on a succession of college campuses, starting with St. Joseph’s College in Biddeford, Maine, everyone was a student and everyone was a teacher. No one was passive. You could learn woodworking in the morning and feminist theory in the afternoon, and then let loose and make candy houses in the evening. Childcare was free, tuition was minimal, and the locations were scattered throughout the country, making it easy for interested parties to attend. For many of the participants, it was their first experience of being the majority gender in a design classroom or architecture office. Even decades later, they remembered the experience with happy tears. As with many collaborative enterprises with shoestring budgets, WSPA eventually dissipated, but not before giving a generation of women architects the tools (sometimes literally) to imagine a more communitarian world. It sounds like a club I would definitely have liked to be part of. Without further ado, here is “Not Only Survive, but Flourish: The Story of WSPA.” __ Special thanks in this episode to Leslie Kanes Wisemen, Katrin Adam, Cathy Simon, and Paulett Taggart.  And to the Smith College Special Collections, which houses all of the WSPA archives.  You can see some incredible photos from this collection, including the Building Charades and Architecture Cakes, on our Instagram page at NewAngleVoice This podcast is brought to you by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation and produced by Brandi Howell. You can find other episodes of New Angle: Voice wherever you find your podcasts.  And if you liked this episode, please leave a review and share with a friend.

5. 

   8 Oct 2024

   Catherine Bauer Wurster:  A Thoroughly Modern Woman

   Welcome to New Angle Voice: I’m your bi-coastal architect and host, Cynthia Phifer Kracauer. Catherine Bauer’s life divided into two names and two geographies:  her urban east coast youth, and her Bay Area soft landing.  She hobnobbed with the bohemian elite of the interwar years….brilliantly charming the pants off of the big architect names of the Weimar Republic, Paris cafe society, and the International Style:  Gropius, Mies, Corb, Oud, May…with her lover, Lewis Mumford—culminating in the publication of her 1934 classic :  Modern Housing. Her glamour and charismatic presence endeared her to trade unionists, labor leaders, and politicians, including five presidents—who she tried to turn to her vision of housing as a worthy responsibility of the government—sexier and leftier during the Depression. Her arguments were a harder sell in the red scare fifties and ran into a dreary deadlock in the suburban sixties, as she later wrote from her west coast stronghold at the University of California, Berkeley. In the Bay Area she developed an academic career that also included a husband, a daughter, and a house on the bay – all surrounded by the nature she quickly grew to love. Her legacy lives on to this day, as even the latest of housing legislation echoes the progressive ideals she was advocating for in her prime. Hear now:  Catherine Bauer Wurster:  A Thoroughly Modern Woman. Special thanks in this episode to Barbara Penner, Gwendolyn Wright, Sadie Super, Matthew Gordon Lasner, Katelin Penner, and Carol Galante.  Archival recordings are from the UC Berkeley Bancroft Library. This podcast is produced by Brandi Howell, with editorial advising from Alexandra Lange. New Angle Voice is brought to you by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation.  Funding for this podcast comes from the New York State Council on the Arts. You can find other episodes of New Angle: Voice wherever you find your podcasts.  And if you liked this episode, please leave a review and share with a friend.

6. 

   27 Jun 2024

   Beyond Architecture: The Fantasy Worlds of Phyllis Birkby

   We continue our throw-back to the seventies, and take a deeper dive into the many facets of the women’s movement that impacted the practice of architecture. Pushed to the side and rarely credited for her architectural work at Davis Brody,  Phyllis Birkby became a significant figure in extending the lesbian women's movement to architecture during the 1970s. Her environmental fantasy workshops played a crucial role in galvanizing the community, providing a creative and empowering space within a male-dominated profession. Growing out of other consciousness raising techniques, freed up in her classes, Phyllis released the rigor of her conventional training to get down on the floor,  and lead the group in sketching their fantasies however outlandish on giant rolls of butcher paper.  She encouraged the women to imagine architecture above, below, and beyond the norm. Birkby's work not only contributed to architectural discourse but also fostered a sense of collective identity among lesbian architects, highlighting the intersectionality of gender, sexuality, and professional identity in the field. In her later years, she focused on architecture for people marginalized in other ways – by addiction, by age, and by disability, again imagining spaces of community and support. Welcome to Beyond Architecture: The Fantasy Worlds of Phyllis Birkby Special thanks in this episode to Stephen Vider, MC Overholt, Gabrielle Esperdy, Matthew Wagstaffe, Leslie Kanes Weisman and the Smith College Special Collections. This podcast is produced by Brandi Howell, with editorial advising from Alexandra Lange. New Angle Voice is brought to you by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation.  Funding for this podcast comes from the New York State Council on the Arts.

7. 

   9 Apr 2024

   Laying the Groundwork: Women in American Architecture, Spring 1977

   That was some party. Even though I didn’t make it to the splashy opening, I did attend the transformational exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, our subject in this episode. A rarely used sculpture gallery was filled with ranks and files of cheap drafting tables, their tops tilted to display what seemed to be pages out of the book, one spread to a table. It overwhelmed with information—but seemed void of the chatter of us working women. Welcome to New Angle Voice, I’m your host, Cynthia Kracauer.  In this episode, we revisit the first significant effort to publicly tell the under-told stories of American women in architecture: “Women in American Architecture: A Historic and Contemporary Perspective.” On view at the Brooklyn Museum from February-April of 1977, the groundbreaking exhibition and simultaneous book, curated and edited by Susana Torre, clearly defined the state of play for women in the architecture profession. Alienated by the profound hostility expressed by the AIA, women architects found an accepting cohort at the Architectural League of New York. We organized. We canvassed. We raised our consciousnesses. The project team identified subjects so previously obscured as to be unknown, and then with the energy and drive of a furious mob, they broke through and laid the groundwork for scholarship, social change, and recognition of women architects for the next fifty years. Get your consciousness raised: listen to our voices. Here’s “Laying the Groundwork: Women in American Architecture, Spring 1977.” Special thanks in this episode to Susana Torre, Andrea Merrett, Suzanne Stephens, Cynthia Rock, Deborah Nevins, and Robert AM Stern. This podcast is produced by Brandi Howell, with editorial advising from Alexandra Lange. Thanks also to production assistants Virginia Eskridge and Aislinn McNamara. New Angle Voice is brought to you by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation. Funding for this podcast comes from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Graham Foundation. We are beginning our third season, and hope that if you have followed our progress, that you will want to continue to support our ongoing efforts to tell women’s stories of challenge, struggle and success. Visit our website to make a contribution. www.bwaf.org.

8. 

   20 Dec 2023

   Architecture, Family Style – The Lives and Work of Sarah Harkness and Jean Fletcher

   Sarah Pillsbury, or Sally as she was better known by her peers, and Jean Bodman were both architects who married architects.  As an architect who also married an architect, my perspective may be more inside baseball on the professional side, but utter awe and fascination on the family end. I’m Cynthia Phifer Kracauer, architect, Executive Director of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, mother of only two, and your host.   Welcome to our last episode of New Angle Voice 2023. It’s hard to look at the early days of TAC—the Architects Collaborative—for a time a world-class firm founded by two husband/wife couples and a handful of their classmates … with Walter Gropius thrown in to give them the gravitas that concealed their youth—without a bit of nostalgia.  Nostalgia for the naïve progressive ideology, nostalgia for that post World War 2 hope that the world could be remade through architecture—after all, Europe was rubble—and utter amazement that the firm fared as well as long as it did.  TAC was admired by women of my generation who saw two women partners with 13 children between them, garnering design awards, winning competitions, and acting on a world stage with far flung offices and impressive civic and institutional work.  For goodness sakes the National American Institute of Architects hired them for their new headquarters!  What could be more iconic. Soon after the founding of the firm in 1947, Sarah and Jean wrote an article for House & Garden titled “Architecture, Family Style” which – as their biographer Michael Kubo writes – constituted something of a manifesto for the changing needs of the postwar housewife. But as we all know, sometimes youthful dreams don’t pan out. In this episode, we revisit the utopian fantasy that the Architects Collaborative built and take a look inside.  “Architecture, Family Style – The Lives and Work of Sarah Harkness and Jean Fletcher". Special thanks in this episode to Sara Harkness and Joseph Fletcher, Michael Kubo and Amanda Kolson Hurley.  Current Six Moon Hill residents Linda Pagani and Barbara Katzenberg kindly opened their homes and shared their stories.  Long time TAC  partners Perry Neubauer and Gail Flynn were generous with their time as were Andrea Leers and Jane Weinzapfel.  The archival oral history of Sally Harkness comes from her interview with Wendy Cox. This podcast is produced by Brandi Howell, with editorial advising from Alexandra Lange.   Thanks also to production assistants Virginia Eskridge and Aislinn McNamara. New Angle Voice is brought to you by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation.  Funding for this podcast comes from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Graham Foundation.

9. 

   14 Aug 2023

   Anna Wagner Keichline: The Legacy of Invention

   1913 was the year of the grand march for suffrage in Washington DC, the 250,000 marchers and attendees eclipsed the coverage the following day of the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson.  Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, population 4216, had its own march, on the fourth of July. Costumes were di rigeur, with a goodly number of  stately toga clad ladies and a few wild harridans on horseback, along with our intrepid girl in her Cornell cap and gown:  Anna Wagner Keichline… a native Bellefutian. We had to see this for ourselves. So I saddled up my 2002 Honda Minivan, and made the five hour drive from New York City west on Route 80 through gently rolling Allegheny mountains to find Bellefonte and interview Nancy Perkins, her grand niece.  Nancy, a designer herself, has become the engine of Anna’s transformation from a local talent to a polymath of invention.  Nancy is dedicated to preserving the work of her aunt.   She has gathered photos, patents, plans and drawings, and even has a “k-brick”, perhaps Anna’s best known invention - a composite form of brick that foreshadows our modern and ubiquitous concrete block. Not every architect has the opportunity to build skyscrapers. In Bellefonte, Anna used her talents to improve the lives of her neighbors, by designing their houses and gathering places.  She adopted a gently accommodating architectural style in the shadow of all that high Victorian lacery, and designed sturdy churches, theaters, homes, schools, and recreation facilities in her hometown that still stand well and firmly in their context. Today, we present her story:  Anna Wagner Keichline: The Legacy of Invention. Special thanks in this episode to Nancy Perkins, Sarah Lichtman, and Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler. This podcast is produced by Brandi Howell, with editorial advising from Alexandra Lange.   Thanks also to production assistant Virginia Eskridge. New Angle Voice is brought to you by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation.  Funding for this podcast comes from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Graham Foundation.

10. 

    31 May 2023

    Amaza Lee Meredith: Love and Home

    I picked up a free glossy real estate magazine with an enticing photograph of summer leisure pursuits under the title Sag Harbor: A Whale of a Good Time. We traveled out there in early spring, collecting voices of preservation, community, celebrity, and long tenured summer families as we searched for Amaza Lee Meredith’s modern architecture. A short bike ride away from the summer haunts of Melville, Steinbeck, Betty Friedan, Spaulding Gray, lived the creator of Azurest North, the Black summer real estate enclave syndicated by Amaza Lee Meredith with her sister Maude Terry. But on the beach we found only Maude’s name enshrined on the commemorative plaque. For decades, Amaza and her life-long partner Edna Meade Colson, made an annual migration to enjoy the respite and comfort of their shared northern home.  Hundreds of miles south is their other Azurest—a tidy white International Style house on the edge of the Virginia State University Campus where Meredith and Colson both maintained significant teaching positions, living openly queer lives. Together, the homes and communities that Meredith helped establish provided a sense of joy and pleasure to those at a time when this wasn’t always possible.  And her story, as it continues to unfold with time, is a point of inspiration for those who have been lucky enough to discover it. In this episode, we explore the intersections of sexuality, modernity, art, architecture, and the faith community that nurtured this pair of lovers.  Amaza and Edna found their home in each other and shared it openly with their church, their colleagues and their students.   Listen to Amaza Lee Meredith:  Love and Home. Special thanks to writers Jacqueline Taylor and Jessica Lynne, and to Brooke Williams who graciously provided Sag Harbor resident insights, as did advocates and preservationists Georgette Grier-Key, Michael Butler, and Renee Simons.  And to Reverend Grady Powell and Reverend Dr.  George WC Lyons from Gillfield Baptist Church in Petersburg, Virginia. Franklin Johnson-Norwood is the Director of Alumni Relations at Virginia State University, and our excellent tour guide for Azurest South, and to Christina Morris of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. New Angle Voice is a presentation of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation.  This podcast is produced by Brandi Howell, with editorial advising from Alexandra Lange.  Virginia Eskridge provides daily assistance. Generous funding for this season has been provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Graham Foundation. Take a look at the illustrated Amaza Lee Meredith profile on the Pioneering Women of Architecture website.

11. 

    19 Apr 2023

    The Art We Must Live With: Ada Louise Huxtable and Architecture Criticism

    Anyone who writes about American architecture of the mid twentieth and early 21 st century measures their critical achievement with the yardstick drawn by Ada Louise Huxtable. With countless articles for two great daily newspapers, this petite New Yorker had a gigantic influence on our understanding of the work of architects, real estate developers, city bureaucrats, and the city itself, over the course of six decades in print. General readers are quite accustomed to having their choices in books, films, dance, opera, drama, TV, and music directed and influenced by critics opinions. We find our favorite interpreters, trust their judgements, buy books or tickets. But in the concrete jungle of the city, we are captives, we have no choice to ignore what is built by others to house us, for our work places, our transit systems, our public realm. The ubiquity of mediocre architecture dulls the senses, and yet, when architecture achieves greatness it can exalt the human spirit. Ada Louise Huxtable set out to separate the dull from the great. A few architects tried to argue with her. They never won. With her impeccable civic values, cultivated aesthetic sensibility and lacerating accuracy she praised and razed. Listen now to The Art We Must Live With: Ada Louise Huxtable and Architecture Criticism. Special thanks in this episode to the generous architectural critics:  Alexandra Lange, Cathleen McGuigan, Christopher Hawthorne, Julie Iovine, Karrie Jacobs, Christine Cipriani and Paul Goldberger–all achieved their craft following the inimitable example set by Ada Louise.  Historian Meredith Clausen, Wall Street Journal editor Eric Gibson, and the Huxtable archive team of Stuart and Beverly Denenburg, and from the Getty Center:  Maristella Casciato everyone was exceedingly helpful. This podcast is produced by Brandi Howell, with editorial advising from Alexandra Lange.   Thanks also production assistant Virginia Eskridge. New Angle Voice is brought to you by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation.  Funding for this podcast comes from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Graham Foundation.

12. 

    8 Mar 2023

    Ray Eames: Beauty in the Everyday

    New Angle: Voice is back! We kick off Season Two with Ray Kaiser Eames. Many know Ray Eames as the small, dirndled woman behind her more famous husband. In this episode, we uncover the talented artist who saw the world full of color, the industrial designer bending plywood in the spare bedroom, and the visionary who treated folk art, cigarette wrappers, flowers, and toys as equally valuable and inspiring. Ray brought the sparkle to the legendary Eames Office, as you’ll discover in this episode “Beauty in the Everyday: The Life and Work of Ray Eames.” Special thanks in this episode to Pat Kirkham, Lucia Dewey Atwood, Llisa Demetrios, Jeannine Oppewall, Donald Albrecht, Meg McAleer and Tracey Barton at the Library of Congress, and Alexandra Lange. This podcast is produced by Brandi Howell, with editorial advising from Alexandra Lange.   Thanks also to Virginia Eskridge, and Amy Auscherman, Director of Archives and Brand Heritage for MillerKnoll.  The archival audio heard in this episode comes from the MillerKnoll archives and the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.  Intro music composed by Emma Jackson. New Angle Voice is brought to you by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation.  Funding for this podcast comes from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Graham Foundation, and MillerKnoll.

13. 

    14 Mar 2022

    Florence Knoll: Total Design

    With her legendary unerring taste and a total commitment to produce absolute perfection in her self, her work, her products, and how she would be remembered, Florence Knoll is generally recognized as the single most powerful figure in the field of modern design. As an architect, Florence was the force behind the seamless integration of furniture, space, textile, art, graphic design into a perfect brand concept:  Total Design.  Her influence transcends the specific disciplines, she was the force integrating them, and in her work at the Knoll Planning Unit, she promulgated the values that still motivate architects and designers today:  solve the program with scale and detailing appropriate to the interior in support of how people behave in the active environment. Here she is:  Florence Knoll:  Total Design. Special thanks in this episode to Paul Makovsky, Bobbye Tigerman, Alexandra Lange,  Dorothy Cosonas, David Bright, Celia Bertoia, Alana Stevens, and Kathy Hiesinger and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  The archival audio of Florence Knoll is provided by the Knoll Archives.  Thank you to Leah Kalotay for your help with this recording. This podcast is produced by Brandi Howell, with editorial advising from Alexandra Lange.   New Angle Voice is brought to you by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, with support from Knoll, a MillerKnoll company and SOM.

14. 

    14 Mar 2022

    Norma Sklarek: An Extremely Bold Hand

    Norma Sklarek had many “firsts”.  She was often credited at the start of her career as the first Black Women architect to be licensed in the United States.  That distinction actually goes to Beverly Greene – Norma was the 3rd.   But it didn’t matter.   Young black girls read her name in the likes of Ebony Magazine – a staple publication in every black household at the time –  when she was included in their 1958 article on “Successful Young Architects”.  As more and more discovered her career, she became their role model. Like so many women, then and now, she chose a management path.  Achievement was measurable, ambition was acceptable, and competence over pizazz was a vital and necessary counterpoint to charismatic male designers in firms with large scale complex projects.  As a woman and as an African American, the design path was simply not open to her, and she needed to work, she had two boys to support, and without any shame, she needed to get paid. So her work often fell shadow to the lead designer.  She was the project manager, the woman behind the scenes who made sure things got done… And yet, despite the groundbreaking achievements of Norma, what is the current state of black women in the field of architecture?  In the 2020 AIA Demographic survey, the association counted 94,000 members.  23,500 of these are women.  There are 691 Black Women architects.  As each Black woman achieves her license, it is a matter of pride to add consecutively to that very small number. It’s a matter of shame that it is still so small. On today’s episode, Norma Sklarek: An Extreme Bold Hand. Special thanks to Kate Diamond, Renee Kemp-Rotan, Roberta Washington, Gail Kennard, Michael Enomoto and Gruen Associates, Pat Morton, Jack Travis, Beth Gibb, Alexandra Lange, and Suzanne Mecs.  The archival recording of Norma Sklarek is from the African American Architects of Los Angeles collection at the UCLA Library Center for Oral History Research. This podcast is produced by Brandi Howell, with editorial advising from Alexandra Lange.   New Angle Voice is brought to you by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, with support from Knoll, a MillerKnoll company and SOM.

15. 

    14 Mar 2022

    Fast Food and Radical Rooflines: Helen Fong Shapes Los Angeles Coffee Shops

    Who hasn't had a burger and fries at a Denny's or Bob's Big Boy?  There are thousands of them, not just in Los Angeles, where they were born, but across the country.  These family restaurants are core to how America defined itself after World War II. Cars, families, space flight, modernism....the new world order.... And who defined that fun and futuristic look?  Our pioneering LA woman architect: Helen Fong. She was born in 1927 in Los Angeles Chinatown where her immigrant parents ran a laundry that she often worked at as a child.  The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was still intact, and you can imagine this presented many challenges for Helen as she grew up. She went on to create some of LA’s most iconic diners, which are still celebrated by legions of fans.  These landmarks have cemented their place in pop culture.  Strip malls and roadside attractions, driving with the top down, hair blowing in the wind and another day of sunshine. Helen’s design work helped create this image, yet many don’t know the story of the woman who they have to thank.  On today’s episode:  Fast Food and Radical Rooflines: Helen Fong Shapes Los Angeles Coffee Shops. Special thanks in this episode to Hadley Meares, Victor Newlove, Barbara Bestor, Jim Poulos, Annie Chu, Phoebe Yee, Chris Nichols, John English, and Ginny Glass. This podcast is produced by Brandi Howell, with editorial advising from Alexandra Lange.   New Angle Voice is brought to you by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, with support from Knoll, a MillerKnoll company and SOM.

16. 

    15 Feb 2022

    Natalie de Blois – To Tell The Truth

    Natalie de Blois (1921–2013) contributed to some of the most iconic modernist works for corporate America, all while raising four children.  After leaving this significant mark on post-war Park Avenue, she transferred to the SOM Chicago office, where she became actively involved in the architecture feminist movement and was one of the leaders in the newly formed Chicago Women in Architecture advocacy group.  Later, she finished her career as a professor at UT Austin, where she trained a future generation of architects. As an architect, Natalie loved systems – understanding how things worked.  For her, it wasn’t just pretty buildings, she challenged the code and questioned the status quo. And like the buildings she designed, there was a certain complexity to Natalie herself.  She was a woman of resilient beauty, inspiring yet distant, ahead of her time.  Often overshadowed by her male counterparts, we hope to shed light on her life’s work and legacy. Special thanks to Gabrielle Esperdy, Audrey Matlock, Carol Krinsky, Carol Ross Barney, Margaret McCurry, Peter Dixon, John Newman, Liz Watykus, Julia Murphy and Robert de Blois.  The archival audio of Natalie de Blois interviewed by Betty Blum is from the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Architects Oral History Project.  Thank you to Nathaniel Parks, Director of the  Art Institute of Chicago Archives, for your help with this recording. This podcast is produced by Brandi Howell, with editorial advising from Alexandra Lange.  Special thanks to Matt Alvarez and Iowa Public Radio for their production assistance.  New Angle Voice is brought to you by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, with support from Knoll, a MillerKnoll company and SOM.

17. 

    6 Oct 2021

    Finding Julia Morgan

    Welcome to New Angle: Voice. Episode 1 takes us on an earthquaking tour from San Francisco to Paris and back, with Julia Morgan (1872-1957), the first woman to attend the architecture program at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the first woman to receive the AIA Gold Medal. Special thanks in this episode to Brandi Howell, Alexandra Lange, Julia Donoho, Karen McNeill, Victoria Kastner, Karen Fiene, Justin Hoover, Amy Hart and Jim Parks, the women of the Monday Club of San Luis Obispo, Laura Sorvetti, Mark Wilson, and Aislinn McNamara. The archival audio of Sara Holmes Boutelle is from Boutelle's Julia Morgan collection at the Special Collections and Archives, Cal Poly University, San Luis Obispo. New Angle: Voice is produced by Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation. Your host is Cynthia Phifer Kracauer, AIA.

Inside a recent episode

Fighting Modernism: Elizabeth Gordon Defines the House Beautiful

Published 20 Oct 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] What was also present, though, was this idea of open floor plans and kitchens that incorporated the latest appliances and the latest cleanable surfaces. So this was not a throwback to 19th century way of life. It was sort of this comfortable merging of tradition and modernity. And that came to define almost everything that Elizabeth Gordon was publishing in this mid-century moment, and especially the pacesetters that she was holding up as her ideal. Elizabeth Gordon came up with this tag phrase, the station wagon way of life, which was very much about that station wagon in the driveway and the family in the back barbecuing with dad at the grill. […]

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