© 2024 Iowa Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Artistic Iowa: Architectural Design

MCAD Library
A 1930s postcard of the Woodbury County Courthouse in Sioux City

Frank Lloyd Wright once said, “Every great architect is — necessarily — a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.”

On this edition of River to River, Ben Kieffer hosts a discussion on architecture in Iowa. He’s joined by Iowa State University College of Design associate professors Dan Naegele and Cameron Campbell. They explain how building design in Iowa has changed over the decades, what is says about us, and the art of the field.

Campbell says it's not just the outside of a building that architects put their creativity towards, but every aspect of the space.

"Once we've solved shelter and once we've solved protecting people from the rain and keeping a building from falling down, we have to address the issue of experience," says Campbell. "The attention to that experience - how a space smells, how do you feel, what is it like to walk through a hallway of an institutional building and feel your heels click."

This program originally aired as part of IPR's 2016 Iowa Weekduring the month of September.

Ben Kieffer is the host of IPR's River to River