The Vienna Secession (1897) – Otto Wagner and Functionality

RM Schindler studied engineering and architecture from 1906 to 1911, in the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where he was born in Vienna in 1881. At the Academy of Fine Arts, he fell under the tutelage of the great Otto Wagner. A decade before, in 1894, Wagner’s inaugural lecture at the academy called for “architectural realism,” in which form should follow the function of a building. He rejected classic and historic styles in favor of designing buildings that reflect their purpose. He reiterated his ideas in a manifesto and textbook entitled Modern Architecture, emphasizing the importance of designs based on methods and materials rather than decorations and stating, “Only that which is practical can be beautiful.”

Otto Wagner was instrumental in the urban planning of modern Vienna.

In 1897, he aligned himself with the Vienna Secession. Co-founded by one of his former students, Josef Hoffmann, its goal was to break free from nationalist and conservative schools of art, architecture and design. The members advocated for a free exchange of ideas with artists outside of Austria. When Wagner was commissioned to design the Stadtbahn railway network, he incorporated these new ideas with a strong focus on technology and efficiency, molding Vienna into a more accessible and metropolitan city.

The Wagner School would become instrumental in Schindler’s work, and he would later pay homage to his master, saying, “Modern Architecture began with Mackintosh in Scotland, Otto Wagner in Vienna, and Louis Sullivan in Chicago.”

Ornamentation and Crime (1908) – Adolf Loos and Minimalism

In 1913, Schindler attended private courses by architect and linguist Adolf Loos. Born in Brünn (present-day Brno, Czech Republic), Loos studied in Dresden and traveled to the U.S., Paris and London before coming to Vienna to work as an architect. In 1908, he gave a lecture, Ornamentation and Crime, in which he argued that removing ornamentation from objects of everyday use is instrumental in the evolution of culture. His minimal buildings stirred controversy but would become pillars in the modernist idea of creating structures that always look current and can withstand the test of time.

Adolf Loos’ Scheu House (1913)

This minimalist approach had a profound effect on Schindler. Following in Loos’ footsteps, he traveled to the U.S. the following year. He spent two weeks in New York before coming to Chicago, where he began a three-year contract as a draftsman for the firm Ottenheimer, Stern and Reichert.

The Wasmuth Portfolio (1910) – Frank Lloyd Wright and Organic Architecture

But the true nature of Schindler’s travel to the U.S. was to work for Frank Lloyd Wright. He had seen the Wasmuth Portfolio, containing 100 lithographs of Wright’s work, the first time it was introduced to an international audience. It advocated for the integration of nature and use of organic materials in design.

This organic architecture and Wright’s breaking away from the traditional shapes of boxed homes were radical ideas at the time and prompted Schindler to write his own manifesto. In Modern Architecture: A Program, Schindler pointed out that recent advancements in construction allow the architect to build in any shape he wants. He also declared that the essential elements in his art and architecture would be “space, climate, light and mood.”

Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater (1938)

Coincidentally, after his draftsman contract ended, Wright was commissioned to rebuild the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and hired Schindler to run his office while he was gone. Working out of Taliesin, Wright’s home and office in Spring Green, Wisconsin, was a revelation to Schindler. Constructed of natural materials and situated on a hill amidst artificial lakes, Taliesin was designed to be a community and farm in addition to being an office, workshop and residence. Its layout – spread out as part of the landscape – is a prime example of Wright’s organic architecture. And the integration of spaces for life and work became a principal idea in Schindler’s own designs.

Modernism in Los Angeles
The Barnsdall House (1921)

Schindler first came to Los Angeles in 1920 to supervise the construction of a house for oil heiress Aline Barnsdall. He would design two additions on-site, the Oleander House and the director’s house (after the plans were sent to Wright for approval, of course). Initially, he worked with Wright’s son, Lloyd, until 1921, when Barnsdall fired the Wrights over budget concerns. Schindler saw through the completion of the house, making additions and alterations up until 1925.

Barnsdall House (1921)

The central courtyard is open and surrounded by raised terraces. This integration of outdoor and indoor spaces, possible in L. A.’s temperate climate, would be applied to all of Schindler’s future designs. He also continued to work with Barnsdall and designed a house for a cliff top overlooking the ocean in Palos Verdes. Though it was never built, the Translucent House is considered one of the greatest unfinished projects of the 20th century.

The Kings Road House (1922)

All of Schindler’s influences would coalesce in the design of his own home and studio. The structure was to serve as a cooperative he and his wife would share with another couple. It laid out two L-shaped apartments interlocked with a third communal space. Each leg of the L contains a studio so all four adults can have separate working spaces, following Wagner’s mantra of form following function. Stripped of ornamentation, as preached by Loos, its façade looks as modern today despite it being built a century earlier.

The Kings Road House, view of a courtyard, Schindler’s studio, and a sleeping basket on top

Giving the women their own studios was Schindler’s forward-looking nod to gender equality. The communal space contains a guest room and a shared kitchen and laundry so that housework can be divided. In lieu of a living room, each apartment opens out to a courtyard, separated by sliding doors from each studio to serve the indoor-outdoor integration of Wright’s organic architecture. Every room and courtyard has its own fireplace. And above each apartment is a semi-open sleeping quarter – the idea of sleeping under the stars inspired by a recent trip to Yosemite. This area of what is now West Hollywood was quite bare back then, and the few homes in their surroundings were in the Spanish Mission style.

Part of the interior of Schindler’s studio – he also made chairs and furniture, often built into his designs.

The Lovell Beach House (1926)

Schindler’s next commission was for a beach house for Dr. Philip Lovell, a health-conscious guru who wanted a home that reflected his lifestyle. Begun in 1922 on a largely empty beachfront in Newport Beach, it’s framed by five concrete portals with interlocking floor levels, full-height windows and covered terraces. It’s raised on stilts to protect it from high tides, give its residents better views of the ocean, and provide privacy.

View of the Lovell Beach House when looking towards the ocean

When large numbers of beach homes were being built in the 1950s and 60s, many adopted similar structures – with raised spaces, flat roofs, and outdoor balconies. The use of bare concrete was also adopted in the post-war Brutalist movement. Because of these, the Lovell Beach House is often considered Schindler’s single greatest contribution to modern architecture, and it was one of the few designs to receive any attention in his lifetime.

Space Architecture

Schindler first used the term after seeing Wright’s 1910 Wasmuth Portfolio – “Here was ‘space architecture.’ It was not any more the questions of moldings, caps and finials – here was space forms in meaningful shapes and relations. Here was the first architect.”

In his 1912 manifesto, Modern Architecture: A Program, Schindler had already formulated his theories on architecture centered on the four elements he felt were essential to design – space, climate, light and mood. Like his mentor, Adolf Loos, he came to the U.S. to seek out ideas and inspirations. But his work and travels to New York and Chicago were uninspiring. What he saw were overpopulated cities and people crowded into spaces with hardly any natural light.

Manola Court (1928), an apartment designed for Herman Sachs,

He had meant the journey to be temporary, but with the outbreak of WWI and wary of returning to a tumultuous Europe, he decided to prolong his stay. And when he arrived in Los Angeles in December of 1920 to work on the Barnsdall house, he knew he found the perfect environment – what he called “an earthly paradise” – where he felt he could develop the next stage of a truly modern architecture.

The Manola Court Apartments have been renovated inside and out, and can be rented for overnight or long-term stays. The two dining chairs are reproductions of Schindler’s, which sold to collectors for $10,000 each.

Implementing Spatial Design

At the time, many architects designed the exterior of the building first. The interior was secondary and designed to conform to the outside. In Wright’s architecture, the building’s design conformed to the surrounding natural landscape. Schindler argued that architecture is about the human experience. He wanted to design with the interior spaces first in mind, how they will be used, and how to best integrate them into the natural environment, then accommodate the exterior form of the structure afterward.

Modern interior of the Southall House, built in 1938

Schindler’s use of open floor plans, split-level flooring and indoor-outdoor connectivity emphasized his belief that space, not form, is essential to architecture. His use of clerestory and wall-length windows allowed for the most use of natural light and affected the mood, not just of people, but of places. His elimination of walls and traditional barriers forever changed how inhabitants interacted with each other and their environment.

Modern interiors of the Kallis House (1946) with views over San Fernando Valley

Mastering the Slope

Southern California’s uneven topography always presented quite a challenge for homebuilders. But to Schindler, it became an opportunity to further integrate the home into its natural environment.

How House (1925)

Beginning with the How House (Silverlake, 1925), he found innovative ways, such as cantilevers and terraces, to create multi-level housing on the sloping terrain. He basically sculpted houses into the hillsides while excavating the land as little as possible. In the Grokowsky House (Pasadena, 1928), he used the roof of the street-level garage as the floor of the sundeck overhead. And – as one of the best examples of his topographic design – the Wolfe House (Catalina, 1929) had cantilevered roofs on all three levels which were turned into terraces for the rooms above. But after falling into decades of disrepair, the house was demolished in 2002.

Fitzpatrick-Leland House (1936) – Like many of his homes, it’s set along a slope, with exterior spaces jutting out and interior spaces built into the hill.

Schindler also knew that building on slopes and hilltops gave the home the most access to natural light, better views and better ventilation. The Fitzpatrick-Leland House (1936, Hollywood) looks out over Laurel Canyon Drive. Every floor has windows and openings, reducing the need for artificial lighting and cooling. For the Harris House (1942, Willow Glen), the ridge was flattened to create a patio, and part of the living room cantilevered out over the rock to give the resident, writer Rose Harris, a view. A testament to his ingenuity, he decided to use the boulder as part of the foundation because of wartime restrictions on building materials. Unfortunately, the house was destroyed in a fire in 1959.

Modern interior of the Roth House (1946) on the hills of Studio City

An Architect’s Architect

Schindler never garnered much recognition during his lifetime. His designs were so avant-garde that most other architects didn’t always know what to make of them.

The blueprint for the Kings Road House

Initially, he sent the blueprint for the Kings Road House to his contemporaries, including Louis Sullivan in Chicago. Sullivan replied, “I received a blueprint for a house, but as no explanation came with it, I couldn’t make it out at all.”

The blueprint for the Bauhaus Building by Walter Gropius was all too similar to the pinwheel design of the Kings Road House.

Looking back, there have been many comparisons asserting his designs had an influence on the early modernist architects. Mies van der Rohe’s Concrete Country House (1923) and Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus Building (1926) and Master Houses (1926) used interlocking L-shape spaces, cantilevered flat roofs and semi-open floor plans. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian houses of the 1930s also featured flat roofs, L-shapes and open courtyards. Even Le Corbusier’s famed Villa Savoye (1930) echoed the Lovell Beach House – an elevated building with an open floor plan and terrace roof.

Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona Pavilion (1929)

In 1932, Schindler was omitted from MoMA’s International Style exhibition, for which the curators would later apologize. He was also excluded from the groundbreaking Case Study Houses of the 1940s and 50s, often credited for providing the prototypes for modern California homes. But, clearly, numerous features of CSH, including overhanging flat roofs, open floor plans, full-height glass windows, integrated indoor-outdoor spaces, and the use of prefabricated building materials, trace back to the Kings Road House built two decades earlier.

CSH #22, The Stahl House (1960) by Pierre Koenig

Frank Gehry recalls being a young architectural student in awe of the way Schindler broke away from Frank Lloyd Wright and credits Schindler for his own rough, raw and unpredictable style. Richard Neutra, who Schindler made partner, and Raphael Soriano and Gregory Ain, who were apprentices at one point, would all go on to pioneer the Mid-Century Modern architecture California is known for and is still popular today. In 1939, Twice a Year magazine published a map of contemporary architecture and Schindler was on the list twelve times. But he was never one for the limelight. In 1945, when one of his assistants found a folder of letters from publications requesting photos of his work, he said, “I’d rather design another house than take care of that.”

The Shulman Home and Studio (1950) by Raphael Soriano is a highly-regarded example of Mid-Century Modern. The L-shape and integrated spaces for life and work take from Schindler’s style.

In 1960, years after his death, British critic Reyner Banham visited the Kings Road House and was simply blown away. He commented that Schindler seemed to be designing “as if there had never been houses before.” In 1986, the MAK museum in Vienna, Schindler’s native country, presented a retrospective. They then launched the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, now housed at the Kings Road House, to bring attention to his work. And in 2008, when the L.A. Times surveyed a list of architects and historians to name the most critical and important building in the city, the Kings Road House came in at number one.

The Lechner House (1948)

Schindler was 65 when he died of cancer, an age when some architects’ careers are just getting off the ground and being recognized. His work was overlooked, often misunderstood, in his lifetime. But in architecture, a building that withstands the test of time becomes forever a testament to their creator. Here in Los Angeles, no less than 56 of the structures he’s built still stand. And as Banham pointed out, “no two are alike.” Every design stands on its own.

Restored interior of the Lechner House, which sold for $4.9 million in 2019

Instead of including him in the International Style exhibition, Schindler had received this criticism: “Your attitude toward architecture is undoubtedly colored by life in California. It is of great advantage for architects to travel to different parts of the country and so vary their surroundings and broaden their views.”

But I think the opposite is true. Being colored by life in California is a large part of what made him a great architect. He found a place he loved, captured its mood and temperament, and learned all of its elements by heart. This place inspired him. He stayed here, literally dug his roots into the ground, carved a place – many a place – out of the landscape, and built monuments in stone.

Roth House (1946)

And he just knew he could not have done it anywhere but here. Before he died, he wrote –

I came to live and work in California. I camped under the open sky, in the redwoods, on the beach, the foothills and the desert. I tested its adobe, its granite and its sky. And out of a carefully built-up conception of how the human being could grow roots in this soil — unique and delightful — I built my house. And unless I failed, it should be as Californian as the Parthenon is Greek and the Forum Roman.