Hollywood has its message VERY wrong when portraying what architects and designers do in a day. starchitects:the podcast explores fact versus fiction with the professionals. How many interior designers (shoulder pads included) should work from the residential office of a sole proprietor? Would you pay for the services of an architect who signed off on a building where not only the electrical wiring is shot but the sprinklers won’t work unless you explode the water tanks on the roof (?!) using C4 (Paul Newman, I’m looking at you…)? Do you trust your developer moved the headstones AND the bodies?

A&D (architecture and design) professionals Jeff Wolinski, Vince Galea, and Roberta Pennington are joined each episode with a hand-selected “starchitect” in our amazing basement studio in Portland, Oregon and try to tear down what the entertainment industry has built up.

S04/ E03 The Christmas Cottage

September 02, 2019 by Roberta Pennington in romantic comedy, interior design, design, comedy, oregon

This is a story of an interior designer whose BFF asks her to be maid of honor, but she must take on a few responsibilities—such as making sure the family cottage is perfect for the honeymoon. Legend has it that if newlyweds spend their first night there, everlasting love and happiness follow. Not to mention cold vanilla emotionless sex.

When you mix BFFs, old lovers, fake snow, lonliness and magic——you get a film called The Christmas Cottage starring Jared Padalecki…..wait that’s not the film….it’s the one WITHOUT Jared Padalecki. Sorry Supernatural fans.

S03/ E04 Sleepless in Seattle

November 18, 2018 by Roberta Pennington in architecture, romantic comedy

A dead wife forces an architect to move across the country and live on a houseboat where he is stalked by a crazy lady who likes to peel apples with a switchblade.

This is not a pitch for a horror movie but the basic idea of the romantic comedy starring, America’s sweetheart, Tom Hanks and, Dennis Quaid’s ex-wife, Meg Ryan. If you have a hard time wrapping your head around this or you are already bored to death with the vanilla idea of Hanks and Ryan, then just watch an Affair to Remember. That’s exactly what Nora Ephron did and renamed it Sleepless in Seattle.

This is a moment in time just before Hanks won two Oscars, Ryan hooked up with Russell Crowe, no internet and you could walk up to an airplane gate without going through security. There is nothing else to say about this movie except it was made in 1993 and we watched it.

Thanks for nothing America!

starchitect: Francis Dardis