Schindler House

SOMETIMES armoires seem to flirt, and keyholes appear to wink. At least that's how furniture conceptually "behaves" in Victor Burgin's "The Little House," an experimental work at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture's Schindler House. To experience the piece, visitors flow through the empty 1922 structure (designed by architect Rudolf M. Schindler as his family home), listening to a story by way of speakers placed in the various rooms.

A self-guided tour of Los Angeles-area homes designed by Austrian architect Rudolf M. Schindler will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $50 and can be purchased in advance or at the Schindler House, 835 N. Kings Road, West Hollywood. For more information, call (213) 651-1510.

The ongoing issues surrounding the development of new housing on North Kings Road have particular interest to me (Letters, Dec. 21). My grandfather, Arthur R. Kelly, was an architect who had built a home at 850 N. Kings Road in the 1920s. That house was torn down long ago in order to build the condominium building that is now directly across from the Schindler House. Kelly built many notable homes and commercial buildings throughout the city from 1900 through the 1940s, including the William S. Hart ranch in Newhall.

Propelled by a dream of creating a new kind of architecture based on modern aesthetics and utopian ideals, Rudolf M. Schindler in 1914 packed his bags and left Vienna. He realized his vision in Los Angeles, where 56 of his buildings erected between 1921 and 1952 are still standing.

Some of L.A.'s best known architecture firms and artists have designed one-of-a-kind lamps to be auctioned Nov. 2 at a fund-raiser for the MAK Center in West Hollywood. Among those who designed, produced and donated their work for the event, dubbed “Light My Way, Stranger” : Ball-Nogues Studio, Cory Buckner, Ehrlich Architects, Hodgetts & Fung, Eric Owen Moss, Barbara Bestor, Dewey Ambrosino, Liz Larner and Sam Durant. All proceeds will support the nonprofit MAK Center for Art and Architecture's programming and stewardship of three dwellings by architect R.M. Schindler: the landmark 1922 Schindler House in West Hollywood, the 1939 Mackey Apartments in the Mid-Wilshire district of L.A., and the 1936 Fitzpatrick-Leland House, the Hollywood Hills West residence where the auction will be held.

Residents in West Hollywood near the Schindler House no doubt have an attitude of peaceful co-existence with the famous structure, built by noted Modernist architect Rudolph M. Schindler in 1922. It now houses the generally unobtrusive MAK Center for Art and Architecture (an offshoot of Austria's Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art, which in German yields the acronym MAK).

Several Austrian expatriates have made their mark on Los Angeles. Arnold changed politics. Wolfgang changed food. A third -- Rudolf M. Schindler -- changed the city itself through his innovative residential architecture. In 1922, Schindler built a dwelling on Kings Road in West Hollywood. Intended as a studio and a home, what's become known as the Schindler House is where the architect lived and worked until his death in 1953.

Architectural historian Kathryn Smith was a UCLA graduate student in 1975 when she moved into an enclosed sleeping porch in the 3,110-square-foot Schindler House, the visionary 1922 West Hollywood home designed by Vienna-born architect R.M. Schindler. His former wife, Pauline Schindler, was living in the house and invited Smith to join her and two architects who had set up offices there. Since then Smith has been the house's renter, chronicler and protector.