No Place Like Home

Alison King is breaking all the rules – her own.

King is co-founder of Modern Phoenix, a virtual community of like-minded city dwellers who call themselves MoPhos and whose great loves include our city’s mid-century architecture. Toward that end, King and her colleagues will host the annual Modern Phoenix Expo and Home Tour, which celebrates the art of desert architecture with excursions through distinctive homes built in the ’50s and ’60s.

“One of our hard-and-fast rules each year is never to include houses that are for sale,” King says. “But in this economy, we’re breaking that rule. There are so many beautiful old homes on the market that need a buyer who wants to restore or maintain them, rather than tear them down.”

The Valley's endangered modern architecture is the focus of the tour of homes in uptown Phoenix and the Arcadia neighborhood designed by the likes of Ralph Haver, Al Beadle, and Blaine Drake.

The Expo kicks off from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, April 3, at Phoenix Urban Research Laboratory. The self-guided tour takes place from 1 to 6 p.m. Sunday, April 5.