In the earliest stages of Modernism in the United States gifted modern architects were winning public respect for their private houses, but nowhere more so than in Southern California. R.M. Schindler, Richard Neutra, and Frank Lloyd Wright garnered the earliest attention for their works in and around Los Angeles. Each of these architects developed innovative concrete and structural systems and such experiments became a hallmark of California Modernism.
Schindler had been working in the Chicago office of Frank Lloyd Wright and arrived in Los Angeles in 1919 to supervise the construction of the Hollyhock House, completed in 1921. Soon thereafter he designed and built his own Modern house with his friend Clyde Chace. The home would accommodate both Schindler’s and Chace’s family and was to be an experiment in communal living. The plan includes an intricate sequence of shared and completely private studio spaces; the site is divided into seven distinct zones.
Neutra arrived in Los Angeles in 1925, also having apprenticed with Wright. He lived with Schindler at the King’s road House for five years. Neutra quickly realized that success in architecture was heavily dependent on publicity and he was awarded with the press he so much craved with his magnificent Lovell Health House. Although it is European in its geometry, it’s careful relationship with the landscape is what makes the home American. It is carefully sequenced into a rocky hillside, broken by small terraces and access to other areas of the site.
