Talk: Michael Harmon + Michael Ryan on Modernist Architecture

Does modernist architecture have a future on Long Beach Island? What does our architecture say about us as a society? And how did the beach houses of Loveladies find their way into a cover story in The New York Times this summer?

Join Times writer Michael Harmon for a conversation with award-winning local architect Michael Ryan about the past, present, and future of architecture on LBI — and for the story behind that Times story, which was the culmination of one writer’s 30-year fascination with the innovative homes on LBI’s north end (he’s only 32). That early obsession led to many impromptu house tours by generous Loveladies homeowners, who were thankfully unfazed by a 12-year-old biking up their private lanes with his mom and asking if their house was a Gym Wilson or a Michael Ryan. And almost twenty years after these influential architects first welcomed a young Michael into their studios, he returned to the island to interview them for the story that landed on the cover of the Times Real Estate section.

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Michael Harmon is a writer and regular contributor to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal whose family has been coming to LBI since the 1960s. Lately, his writing assignments have taken him all over the world: from Paris to Istanbul by train, to a herring party in New York, and to South Africa to track celebrity leopards. He is a graduate of Amherst College and the University of Cambridge, lives (mostly) in Brooklyn, and is always counting down the days until his next trip east over the causeway. Follow along with his writing and adventures at mghwrites.com and his food and travel newsletter, Around The World For A Sandwich.