California Moderne

In the past decade, the work of Austrian architect Rudolph Michael Schindler—especially his own residence at 835 Kings Road in West Hollywood, CA—has drawn belated admiration and scholarship. Considered a maverick in the annals of Modernism, Schindler was preoccupied with the shaping of space, not just its function. If historians now eagerly write and the public avidly reads glossy books about Schindler’s architecture and the Kings Road House, its definitive cultural narrative has yet to be written. Architectural historian Robert Sweeney, president of the Friends of the Schindler House, has dedicated his professional life to the preservation of Kings Road. In his writing and research on the subject, he stresses that the house was not just Schindler’s masterwork, but also the built evocation of Schindler’s collaboration with his wife, Pauline Gibling Schindler.