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- At his memorial
exhibition the written tribute referred to
Rudolph
Schindler as "the
least understood of the American pioneers of modern
architecture." However, his work continues to inspire and
enthrall. Born in 1887 in Vienna, he had studied both
engineering and painting and was interested in the work
of Cubist painters. An admiration for Wright's work and
an excitement for the opportunity in America drew him to
Chicago in 1914.Three years later he joined Wright's
office. Schindler was sent to Los Angeles in 1920 to
supervise the construction of the Hollyhock House. Once
completed, he remained in Los Angeles to start his own
practice.
Where houses had a limited budget Schindler sought
economy in structure, so that he could provide what he
considered the vital luxury of three types of living
areas: indoors, enclosed court or patio, and roof
terraces--each relating directly to the other. In his
design for the Lovell House in 1926 he used structure as
a visible organizer within which solids were placed and
space penetrated. The living space, above a beach, was
contained within five, free-standing reinforced concrete
skeletal frames, In the design of the Wolfe House on a
steep hillside in 1929, Schindler abandoned the
conventional conception of a house as a carved mass of
honeycomb material protruding from the hillside, and
created a composition of space units to float above the
hill.
In the 1930s Schindler developed a preference for using
skin construction as opposed to a structural skeleton,
because of the flexibility by which forms might be
organized without having to respect a structural grid.
Through this freedom, he felt, modern architecture might
achieve what the past had referred to as "style."
The Rodakiewicz House in Los Angeles, in 1937, was a fine
example of Schindler's spatial ideas of form and
movement. In his later projects, some of the crispness of
his earlier work was lost as the overall forms became
more fragmented.
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