Last night I attended a lecture by Judith Sheine, the head of the University of Oregon Architecture Department, about Rudolph Schindler and the Kings Road House. Schindler was born in Vienna, but came to America with the hope of working for Frank Lloyd Wright in his Chicago studio, which he did beginning in 1918. In 1920 Wright sent Schindler to Los Angeles to oversee the building of the Hollyhock House and Schindler decided to stay and started his own practice in 1922 with the creation of his own home, the Kings Road House.
The Kings Road House is now over 100 years old and is being preserved by the Friends of the Schindler House which holds Judith as an active member of its board. Summarizing the main talking points of her new book “Schindler, Kings Road, and Southern California Modernism”, Judith counters that not only is the Schindler's home the precedent for California Modernist Architecture but also that he influenced many of the most noteworthy architects of his day and ours from Richard Neutra to Morphosis. What resonated with me the most about Schindler, was that although there was continual reinvention and a willingness to incorporate new materials there was always a consistency in his principles of design and spatial characteristics.
