Book: Schindler House

By Princeton Architectural Press
by Kathryn Smith
88 pages, 81illustrations, 40 in color; $22.95 paperbound

Buy at Amazon.com for $16.07.

New York: Abrams
by Elizabeth A.T. Smith and Michael Darling
288 pages, 220 illustrations, 90 in color; $65.00

Buy at Amazon.com for $45.50.

Rudolph Schindler (1887-1953) was born and schooled in Vienna, was an early friend and later briefly a partner of Richard Neutra, served an apprenticeship in the office of Frank Lloyd Wright, and opened his own architecture office in Los Angeles, 1921. In the half century since his death his reputation, promoted most notably by Esther McCoy and David Gebhard, has steadily grown. Particularly admired are the 1921 house in West Hollywood that Schindler designed for himself, his wife, and another couple, an exercise in indoor/outdoor communication that has still not been surpassed, and the structurally muscular Lovely Beach House of 1922-1926. The total body of is work was remarkably varied, but throughout all of it-and this is what makes Schindler particularly rewarding for interior designers to study-is an untiring experimentation with novel spatial configurations.

Now Schindler's work is the subject of a large exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, from February 25 to June 3, 2001, and traveling later to Washington, D.C., and Vienna. Accompanying the exhibition is an attractive book focusing on the Schindler house and featuring a portfolio of new photography by Grant Mudford. There is also a larger, more comprehensive monograph published in cooperation with the Museum of Contemporary Art and including essays by Michael Darling., Kurt G.F. Helfrich, Elizabeth A.T. Smith, Robert Sweeney, and Richard Guy Wilson; it also includes a checklist of the exhibition, a list of buildings and projects, and a bibliography. Both books are important additions to the Schindler literature.