Durham, North Carolina-based George Smart spent three decades as a management consultant for Fortune 500 companies like Boeing, Microsoft, and Cisco. While he was well-compensated, it was less than fulfilling work for someone who wanted to make a difference. ?There were some wonderful smaller clients, but most of the large organizations wanted to say that they tried to fix problems, rather than actually fixing them,? says Smart.
While researching design ideas for a new family home, Smart discovered a surprising scarcity of online resources. He decided to build his own library, and so NCModernist, and later USModernist, were born. It is the world’s largest nonprofit educational archive dedicated to the documentation, preservation, and promotion of Modernist residential design. George Smart
A passionate advocate for Modernism, Smart realized that there were plenty of fellow enthusiasts out there when he hosted his first house tour. He expected maybe 50 people to attend, but 250 people showed up instead, which was a game-changer. To date, 165 tours have been held across the globe, from the United States to Europe and the Middle East (plus 130 local Thirst4Architecture social gatherings), attracting tens of thousands.
Smart has plenty of tasks to keep track of, yet instead of utilizing his computer, he prefers to keep an old-school legal pad by his desk. He creates a to-do list, and by Sunday he?s cleared it, ready for the next one.
Bringing Modernism to the masses has be...