"I am grateful to you, r.m.s...for...this house, which has been so dear to me that in a way it has determined my life." (-Pauline Gibling Schindler, 9 July 1953)
The building is the embodiment of Pauline's ideal life style. In a letter addressed to her mother, she wrote:"One of my dreams, Mother, is to have, some day, a little joy of bungalow, on the edge of mountains and near a crowded city, which shall be open just as some people's hearts are open, to friends of all classes and types. I should like it to be as democratic a meeting-place as Hull-House, where millionaires and laborers, professors and illiterates, the splendid and the ignoble, meet constantly together."
The Schindler House, also known as the Kings Road House or Schindler Chase house, is a house in West Hollywood, California designed by architect Rudolf Schindler.
The Schindler House is considered to be the first house built in the Modern style. The Schindler House was such a departure from existing residential architecture because of what it did not have; there is no living room, dining room or bedrooms in the house.
The residence was meant to be a cooperative live/work space for two young families. The concrete walls and sliding glass panels made novel use of industrial materials, while the open floor plan integrated the external environment into the residence, setting a precedent for California architecture in particular.
The Schindler House is laid out as two interlinking "L" shaped apartments (referred to as the Schindler and Chase apartments). Each apartment was designed for a separate family, consisting of 2 studios, connected by a utility room. The utility room was meant to serve the functions of a kitchen, laundry, sewing room, and storage. The house is built on a flat concrete slab, which is both the foundation and the final floor. The walls are concrete tilt up slabs, poured into forms on top of the foundation.
Pauline Schinder died in May 1977, leaving the house in the Schindler family until the Friends of the Schindler House (FOSH) purchased the property in June 1980 for $160,000. The house was restored by FOSH in the mid-1980s. Some aspects of the restoration were criticized, as they erased changes Schindler had made to the structure over time. In August 1994, the Friends of the Schindler House signed an agreement with the MAK (Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, Vienna) to create the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House.
The agreement allowed FOSH to retain full ownership of the property, with MAK being responsible for financial obligations and programming. The programing at the MAK Center at the Schindler House investigate the relationship between art and architecture, and includes exhibitions, lectures, symposia and concerts.
