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Schindler/Chase House

Schindler House
Good
  • Modern Movement
  • Identity of Building/Site
  • History of Building/Site
  • Evaluation

Schindler/Chase House

Site overview

The Schindler House has the inevitability of a masterpiece. Incorporating both architectural and social theory, it unfolds formally, spatially and intellectually with a coherence unparalleled in early modern architecture. It was the shared vision of Schindler and his wife Pauline: he gave brilliant architectural form to her interest in a revisionist lifestyle. The house was conceived as an experiment in communal living to be shared with another couple, Clyde and Marian Chace. There were four rooms, one for each person to “express his or her individuality.” The communal gathering areas were patios in the garden, one for each family. There was a shared kitchen and outdoor sleeping porches were provided on the roof. A guest apartment with its own kitchen and bath extended from the rear of the house. Schindler designed the house over a two-month period, in November and December 1921. There were four distinct phases in the planning process, each a logical development of a theme. The essential plan—a pinwheel—was established in the earliest scheme. Using a consistent four-foot module and standardized “Slab-Tilt” wall construction, Schindler created a building in which no two spaces are alike while at the same time seamlessly integrating indoors and out, creating, in his words, “A Real California Scheme.” he house became an architectural laboratory: it is the birthplace of the Southern California modernism we celebrate today. Here in the twenties Schindler, working alone and also with his erstwhile partner Richard Neutra, created a body of work as vital today as it was incomprehensible to the East Coast establishment eighty years ago. The seminal Lovell houses, Pueblo Ribera Court, the Jardinette Apartments, and the Wolfe house on Catalina Island all were designed at Kings Road. (Adapted from the website of the MAK Center)

Primary classification

Residential (RES)

Designations

wes

Author(s)

DOCOMOMO US Register committee | | 7/1999

How to Visit

Open to the public

Location

835 N. Kings Road
Los Angeles, CA, 90069

Country

US
More visitation information

Case Study House No. 21

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Designer(s)

Rudolph M. Schindler

Architect

Nationality

American

Other designers

Rudolph M. Schindler, architectClyde Chase, Pauline Schindler, Richard and Dion Neutra (residents from 1925-7)

Related News

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Book List, Summer Reads

June 08, 2020

Related chapter

Southern California

Commission

1921

Completion

1922

Commission / Completion details

Commission 1921(e), completion 1921-2(e).

Current Use

MAK Center for Art and Architecture, exhibition/historic site

Current Condition

In 1995 the Museum for Andevante Kunst (MAK) Center assumed financial responsibility for restoration efforts begun by Friends of the Schindler House (FOSH) in 1987. The structure sustained structural damage from the January 1994 Los Angeles earthquake. The Restoration effort is to return the house to its 6 June 1922 condition. Original furnishings (on loan from the Schindler Family) are supplemented with replicas.

General Assessment

An early experiment in two-family housing with live/work space for each adult. Rooms open to private terraces and gardens for integrated indoor/outdoor living. Experimental tilt-up concrete construction, outdoor fireplaces, sliding doors of canvas and glass, custom furnishings, open-air sleeping porches and free flow of space create the quintessential California house.
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