Guest house in the foreground; house house in the back.
Oh, I love it when a Schindler comes on the market so we can get a peek at the interior and details of the design. Megathanks to the good folks at the Rudolf M Schindler Facebook page for clueing me in to the recent rental listing of the McAlmon guest house.
This is a fascinating project, in part, because of how Schindler Borged the original house on the property. This is what I call Borgitecture: the adaptation of an existing structure into a new architecture. Sometimes these adaptations obliterate any evidence of the original building. But here, Schindler simply integrates the existing house into his addition which gives the guest house it's decidedly Modern appearance today. I'm sure this was done for cost savings (why tear down a perfectly good house to build a new one?), but I wonder if Schindler also did this out of honesty: "Yo, homeboys: There's someone else's house underneath all this Schindlerness!"
Regardless of the whats and whys, the place is fabulous. Schindler reserved the private and utility spaces for the original cottage and went full-on Modern with the living room extending off the front of the original structure. There's an open house this weekend (or next?) that I wish I could attend, but the posting photos do a great job of conveying the glory of Schindler's design.
If you look carefully at the structure on the right (towards its rear), you can see cottage windows from the original structure.
The new space added to the cottage.
On the backside of the cottage, the original house is easier to see (but you can also see the Borging).
Lovely patio added to the original cottage.
The structures today.
The structures back in the day.
The cottage post-Borged.
I'm guessing that the living room and the patio are "new" (added by Schindler) and the rest of the house is original.
Heading into Schindler's addition.
In the addition.
Overall site plan.
Kitchen (in the original house)
Office (in the original house).
Bedroom (in the original house)
