230 - Architecture, Family Style – Sarah Harkness & Jean Fletcher

The Kitchen Sisters Present

The Kitchen Sisters & Radiotopia

Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2024

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sarah “Sally” Pillsbury and Jean B. Fletcher were both architects who married architects. The two women and their husbands were founding members of The Architects Collaborative (TAC), a visionary, idealistic architecture firm founded just after WWII.

The two women, who had 13 children between them, lived with their families and several other founding partners in Six Moon Hill, a residential community in Lexington, Massachusetts, designed by the group.

TAC was a world class firm of eight architects, including famed architect Walter Gropius, working collectively as a team, stressing anonymity of design. The group won design awards and competitions, and was hired by the National Institute of Architects to design their new headquarters.They also designed the Harvard Graduate Center, many civic and educational buildings, and the University of Baghdad.

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.

Produced by Brandi Howell for Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation’s podcast New Angle: Voice with host Cynthia Krakauer. Editorial advising from Alexandra Lange. Production assistants Virginia Eskridge and Aislinn McNamara.

Special thanks 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.

Funding for New Angle: Voice comes from National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Graham Foundation.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Brandi Howell and Nathan Dalton. Supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and contributors to the non profit Kitchen Sisters Productions.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of podcasts created by independent producers.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Radio Tophia, welcome to the Kitchen Sisters Presently.
0:04.0	We're the Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nicki Silva.
0:09.0	I want to tell you about a new show from Radiotopia Presents that we're really excited about.
0:14.4	It's called Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative.
0:18.0	Host Jess Shane puts out a call on Craigslist for aspiring documentary subjects and selects four to work with.
0:26.0	Together they pull back the curtain on what really goes on behind the scenes of your favorite
0:30.4	non-fiction shows, showing what it takes and what it costs to collect, edit,
0:36.2	and consume stories about people's real lives.
0:39.4	Making documentaries about other people's lives has been my job for about seven years.
0:45.0	But I want to try to do things differently.
0:48.0	And that's why I posted my online auditions ad.
0:51.4	It read, does your story need to be told? Tell it in a documentary. Seeking, shocking,
0:57.0	heartbreaking, transformative stories for a new series about the documentary industry.
1:06.2	And people responded with every kind of story.
1:15.0	But no matter the genre, my auditioners all wanted to tell their stories for an all too familiar reason. Give me confidence and I guess make it concrete in my mind saying it out loud.
1:20.0	Finally freeing myself from something that like kind of kept me captive.
1:24.7	I'm thinking about it like as free therapy kind of.
1:28.0	Radiotopia presents shocking, heartbreaking, transformative.
1:33.7	Out now on your preferred podcast platform.
1:36.3	I found this fascinating article in the archives. It was a Boston Globe profile from
1:45.8	1947 that describes Brunette, Jean Fletcher, and blonde Sally Harkness, who at the time with their families were sharing a house in Cambridge.
1:59.1	They had shared housekeeping and babysitting arrangements.
	...

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