The Aluminaire House, by the architects A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey, was built in New York City as an exhibition of modern materials at the Architectural League and Allied Arts and Industries biennial exhibition in 1931. This presentation is about its ninety-three-year history and Michael Schwarting and Frances Campani’s thirty-six years of involvement with it, including rescuing it from demolition in 1987 and rebuilding it with New York Institute of Technology architecture students until its final rebuilding at the Palm Springs Art Museum in 2024. As in their just published book, The Aluminaire House, the talk will locate the house in relation to the polemics of modern architecture and issues of housing.

Michael Schwarting (1970 Fellow and 2012 Affiliated Fellow) and Frances Campani (2016 Affiliated Fellow) are a husband-and-wife architect team who have worked for thirty-six years to save and protect the Aluminaire House and formed the Aluminaire House Foundation for that purpose. They established Campani and Schwarting Architects in 2000 in Port Jefferson, Long Island.

Schwarting is professor emeritus and Campani is associate professor of architecture at the New York Institute of Technology, where the rescue of the Aluminaire House began. Schwarting is past president of the Society of Fellows and a Trustee Emeritus. Campani is also a painter.