Two new shows in L.A. explore the legacy of early-modern architects. Schindler has never got his due in the pantheon of twentieth-century architects, probably because he was such a synthesizer. But he created two of the greatest houses of the twentieth century, the Lovell Beach House of 1926, in Newport Beach, California, and his own house on Kings Road in West Hollywood, which was completed in 1922.
Hybrids seem more interesting than they once did.
The curators of the show, Elizabeth A.T. Smith and Michael Darling, connect Schindler with a lot of architecture that didn't develop until decades after his death, including the work of Frank Gehry. The Kallis House, an exploded box with slanted walls and angled roofs and trapezoidal windows, does seem to prefigure the house Gehry built for himself in Santa Monica thirty years later. Both houses have a rough, unfinished quality. Like many modernists, Schindler wasn't interested in refinement, and he didn't obsess about materials. He cared about space and about shape, and he was more interested in experimenting with advanced construction techniques than in creating perfectly finished objects.