Los Angeles’ best architecture has always been its residential buildings. Perhaps this results from Western rugged individualism, the ability to live both in the city and in a single-family house, or the benign climate that allows outdoor living with exotic plants. Schindler had ambitions to design large public buildings, commercial buildings, and low-income housing development, but in Southern California there was little room for those ambitions for a Viennese immigrant who looked and acted like a bohemian. During his career, Schindler designed more than 500 projects, of which approximately 150 were realized; almost all were houses, with a few small commercial buildings, for enlightened members of the middle class. The middle class, which essentially could not afford custom-designed houses by the mid-1960s, could barely afford them curing the 1930s. It was Schindler’s ingenuity that allowed him to make affordable modern architecture for people with more taste than money.
Soo Woo, Nov 16, 2011
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