<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=0oMnQ6_0wEDbPU600" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=0oMnQ6_0wEDbPU600" width="1280" height="853" ></figure>Gorst is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and president of Mainspring Narrative Films. Over the last two decades, he has produced and directed 11 feature-length documentaries, including Frey: The Architectural Interpreter (2020), Modern Tide: Midcentury Architecture on Long Island (2012), and Desert Utopia: Midcentury Architecture in Palm Springs (2006). His films Farmboy and Leisurama have both been in national PBS broadcast distribution. The author of Andrew Geller: Deconstructed (2015, Glitterati, Inc.), Jake has also been a contributing writer to The Architect’s Newspaper, VOX Hamptons, HOME Miami, Modern, and Modernism magazines.PPS sat down with him to learn a bit more about his work, his passions, and his thoughts on modernist architecture.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.Where are you from originally, and was there anything about your background that sparked your interest in the built environment?I grew up around Ithaca, New York. And one core memory is my parents had some friends when I was about three or four years old — this would have been the early 70s — and they built a home, but they invited all of their contractor friends and anybody that they knew that was a builder over and they actually built their house in one day. But I remember being a young kid watching this all happen. It was a very cool building. It was almost kind of barn-like, but it was all very natural wood and very rustic. And in subsequent years, I would go to that house because they also babysat my sister and I. So that was something that got me interested in construction. The other thing is that my grandfather was Andrew Geller, who’s pretty well known as an architect from the ’50s through the ’80s who did very fanciful and sort of abstract vacation houses, mostly beach houses along the coast of Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut. But he also worked for industrial designer Raymond Loewy. So he also did department stores, high rise buildings — it’s just a very long list. And so when we would go down to Long Island where they lived for vacation in the summers, he would bring me to construction sites. And so I would get to see many of these really interesting but small modern structures. And that also, I think, really piqued my interest. I never really wanted to be an architect, but I knew what the occupation was very well, and I was more interested in filmmaking. So when I had this opportunity to make our first documentary film, I decided that it was going to be on an architectural topic.You have produced multiple films about 20th-century modern architecture. Why modernism, specifically? Why is it a concept that you keep going back to?First of all, I love it. It’s an aesthetic that’s burned into my soul, you know, I’m very comfortable in it, even though I do live in an 1850 colonial building. I really do love it. And there’s also a little bit of a cause there in that people during the latter half of the 20th-century sort of viewed modernism as disposable. These were seen as cheap Jetsons-style structures — and I really hate that expression, Jetsons-style. If you want that land, you just tear down that little modern house on the property and build what you want, you know, and that has been the prevailing philosophy. And as a result, a lot of amazing architecture has been destroyed. We’re actually at the point now where we’re in danger of losing a whole genre of architecture and architectural history. So I thought this was kind of an untapped topic. There have been architecture films or films about modern architecture, obviously, for a long time, but not a whole lot that really do a deep dive into the history. New England Modernism tells a story that nobody’s really told. Yeah, and we wanted to make the film in a way that would appeal to people who don’t have any knowledge of architecture whatsoever and try to get them interested in it. And so hopefully we achieved that.I don’t know if you’ve encountered this online or on social media, but it seems like mid-century modern, especially as an aesthetic — not just in terms of architecture, but also decor — is sort of trending right now. What do you make of that?There’s something about mid-century modern architecture that is internationally accepted. So you know, there’s a reason why when you watch a TV commercial, the furniture in the commercial that people are sitting in or the house that they’re living in is almost always mid-century modern. Because, on a global level, people will look at that and they recognize it, and they don’t think anything is unusual about it, you know, so it’s universal. Second of all, the design is simple, beautiful and organic. It resonates with people on a psychological level in ways that other types of design don’t necessarily do. So it’s not surprising to see it in commercials, in movies, in advertising, you know, in magazine advertisements and that sort of thing, because it has a global appeal.The preservation movement, specifically in the 20th century, often didn’t consider modernist architecture as worthy of historic designation or protection. Have you encountered a lack of passion for preserving these modernist architectural structures? And how does that combine with the kind of universal appeal you discussed earlier? How are those two factors in tension or harmony with one another?In the United States, historically, people are so in love and enamored with the history of the 18th century. It’s almost a romantic response to the idea of preservation, where the first thing they think about is very classical American design. They want to preserve the colonial architecture, the federalist structures, because they’re trying to preserve American history. A lot of people associate modernism with a European movement and think that it came to the United States through people who came here in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s. They reject modernism because it’s not American, but they’re ignoring the fact that modernism was developing here in the United States as far back as the 1870s. Frank Lloyd Wright — people have classified his work as prairie style but it was modern. We owe a lot of what we’ve seen spring up in the 20th century to Frank Lloyd Wright and many others. He wasn’t the only architect doing this. There were many others, some of whom we talked about in the film.It’s a tricky situation because there’s a misunderstanding of where modernism came from, how far back it goes, and that, you know, what we see built here in the United States is predominantly an architectural style that was developed within the United States. So it’s a matter of educating people, you know, it’s a matter of helping them to understand that, no, we’re not rejecting something that Europeans brought over. When you demolish a modern building, you’re demolishing American history as well.Tell me about the inspiration for New England Modernism, and what if anything do you hope folks take away from the film?About two decades ago, there was a building in Stamford, Connecticut that my grandfather had designed while at the office of Raymond Loewy as the Lord &amp; Taylor building. There was a developer who wanted to tear the building down and put up another Lord &amp; Taylor. I met with the builder and he basically said, “Well, the ceilings are too low. They need to be raised about three feet to be in harmony with the standard that we offer at Lord &amp; Taylor.”My argument was that the building has worked pretty well all these years — you really want to tear down a building by Andrew Geller that came out of Raymond Loewy’s office? There were others in the community there who fought really hard to preserve that building, and it wound up becoming designated a historic site. They did not demolish it, they did add an addition to the back of it, but that was to me, an example of sort of a mindset that really needed to be corrected.These buildings are functional. You have buildings like the Apex building in Rhode Island — that’s a totally functional building, but it had been on the chopping block for years, and it’s decaying because of that. When we first moved to Connecticut in 2017, I started to become aware of all of the amazing modern structures that were just in our neighborhood in Litchfield County. I thought we should do a film about this because you have the buildings that everybody’s aware of, but there’s so much that nobody knows about. It’s those buildings that end up getting destroyed.I would love people to have a greater knowledge of what’s there, the cultural assets in New England. It would be wonderful to see people banding together and cataloging all of these structures, making lists of what’s actually there, and starting architecture tours. That sort of thing becomes known, not only across the United States but internationally people hear about these things, and then that brings tourists to the area. It is an untapped industry in New England that could so easily happen. It happened in Palm Springs, California. It’s starting to happen in Long Island, New York now. We did a screening at the Rhode Island International Film Festival two months ago. People at that screening were saying we really should band together and start tours. And I said, absolutely — and I told them to come to this screening on the 22nd. I said, “Let’s make this a landmark event where people start this discussion in order to make that happen.”By Katy Pickens / Planning &amp; Preservation Writer / kpickens@ppsri.org</div></body>

Mountain View, CA

NewsBreak

Five Questions with Jake Gorst

Gorst is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and president of Mainspring Narrative Films. Over the last two decades, he has produced and directed 11 feature-length documentaries, including Frey: The Architectural Interpreter (2020), Modern Tide: Midcentury Architecture on Long Island (2012), and Desert Utopia: Midcentury Architecture in Palm Springs (2006). His films Farmboy and Leisurama have both been in national PBS broadcast distribution. The author of Andrew Geller: Deconstructed (2015, Glitterati, Inc.), Jake has also been a contributing writer to The Architect’s Newspaper, VOX Hamptons, HOME Miami, Modern, and Modernism magazines.