gregory ain
"He was the first architect I had ever known, and his house was the first stimulus toward my interest in architecture." (McCoy 1954 p12)
carol aronovici
"Rudolph M. Schindler's work has the great merit of embracing instead of enclosing space. The inner part of the enclosure always remained a part of and in harmony with the outer space. Nothing that was within the reach of vision, from the outer lawn to the distant mountains was left out of the concept and rhythm of his buildings." (McCoy 1960b)
raynor banham
"For he was one of the originals of our time, and it's all there from the very first house he built as an independant designer." (Sweeney and Scheine 2012 p75)
david gebhard
“...in [Wright’s] case one always feels that utilitarian considerations will be sacrificed to form. With Schindler the opposite was the case: aesthetics are in some measure sacrificed to utility.” (Gebhard 1972 p39)
“His attempt to combine the expressionistic mood of Wright’s architecture with the intellectual purism of Europe continued to produce ambiguity in much of his later work. Although conflicts such as this helped him to achieve a richness of detail and form, their effect was often negative.” (Gebhard 1972 p45)
“Schindler’s house on Kings Road of 1921-2 and the Lovell beach house of 1922-6 are without question his masterpeices - a view shared by Schindler himself.” (Gebhard 1972 p47)
On environmental control: “Schindler aimed for the norm, ignored the extremes, and in the process compromised the full livability of his environment.” (Gebhard 1972 p51)
“...he so rarely designed stairs that are a pleasure to use...”; “...his kitchens are generally small and dingy...”; “...he produced baths that are minimal to the point of being cramped...” (Gebhard 1972 p58)
“For California and really for the rest of the United States in the early twenties Schindler’s Pueblo Ribera Court...was one of the most original multiple housing designs of the period.” (Gebhard 1972 p65)
"[Schindler] seems almost to have been frightened by colour” (Gebhard 1972 p77)
“Van Doesburg’s careful sculptural arrangements of volumes and of horizontal planes, which penetrate and connect the separate volumes, is in many ways similar to Schindler’s.” (Gebhard 1972 p77)
“Today the Lovell beach house deserves a place with Neutra’s Lovell house (1929), Gropius’ Bauhaus at Dessau (1929-30), Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (1929-30) and Mies van der Rohe’s German Pavilion at Barcelona (1929) as a key work of twentieth-century architecture.” (Gebhard 1972 p80)
“He could, and very often did, kindle deep and lasting enthusiasm in his clients (especially in his female clients)...” (Gebhard 1972 p90)
“Schindler wished to have total control over all details within his buidings.” (Gebhard 1972 p99)
What his designs had in common with de Stijl: “...the use of intersecting rather than singular volumes to establish their forms. This feature is what most strongly differentiates Schindler’s work from that of the closely knit Internationalists—Gropius, Mies, Le Corbusier (pre-1935), and Neutra.” (Gebhard 1972 p105)
“...three of his most important houses: the Elliot house (1930), the Von Koerber house (1931) and the Oliver house (1933).” (Gebhard 1972 p117)
The Buck House anticpated certain aspects of work in the late 1930s by the Bay Area School of Wurster, Funk, and Dailey and, in L.A., of Ain, Soriano, and Harris. (Gebhard 1972 p134)
“A few perceptive clients sensed that of all the avant-garde architects practicing in Los Angeles, Schindler was the most revolutionary...” (Gebhard 1972 p142)
“...Schindler and the other local modernists had established the ranch house form...” (Gebhard 1972 p177)
"...for [Schindler's] contribution was two-fold. First, he transformed the symbolic image of the machine (as expressed in high art) into a former set of forms which would have the impact and vitality of low art; the language to accomplish this was to be found in the everyday building methods used around him in Southern California. Second, he sought to transform low art (the building and the way it was put together) into high art; and for him the high art aim of architecture was the creation of space." (Gebhard 1972 p189)
"From the late teens to the early 1950s, Schindler designed well over two hundred pieces of furniture. Each of these, whether built-in of freestanding, was conceived as an integral aspect of the spatial design of a given building." (Gebhard and Gebhard 1997 p13)
"His genius was in transforming the broad characteristics of both Viennese and American design into his own architectural expression." (Gebhard and Gebhard 1997 p14)
"Schindler's concept of modular units [for furniture] was ahead of its time, by at least a decade, since it was not until the 1940s that sectional furniture was adopted by the general public of that Charles Eames developed his interchangeable storage units." (Gebhard and Gebhard 1997 p19-20)
brendan gill
Schindler "...was a Roman in the mastery with which he wove indoors and outdoors into a seamless fabric." (as quoted in Greer 2003 p8)
talbot hamlin
Called Schindler "...the least understood and the least appreciated of the American pioneers of modern architecture." (McCoy 1960 p192)
alan hess
"Today Schindler is a Promethean figure whose work has invigorated generations of architects." (Hess 2007 p16)
thomas s. hines
"Schindler was perhaps too whimsically experimental and that he never developed the sound architectural principles that made Neutra's repetitive and elegantly simple motifs so much more socially usable and significant." (Hines 1972b p77)
henry-russell hitchcock
In an article written in December 1940 titled "An Eastern Critic Looks at Western Architecture": "The case of Schindler I do not profess to understand. There is certainly immense vitality perhaps somewhat lacking among many of the best architects of the Pacific Coast. But the vitality seems in general to lead to arbitrary and brutal effects. Even his work of the last few years reminds one of inevitably of the extreme Expressionist and Neo-Plastic work of the mid-twenties. Schindler's manner does not seem to mature. His continued reflection of the somewhat hectic psychological air of the region, from which all the others have attempted to protect themselves, still produces something of the look of sets for a Wellsian 'film of the future'" (Gebhard 1972 p176)
“...I would note the extraordinary fact that, at the time, the significance of Schindler’s achievement in the Lovell house was so little recognized. Designed in 1922, the year of Le Corbusier’s Maison Citrohan project, the Lovell house now seems in retrospect one of the really crucial examples of the new architecture of the 1920s.” (Gebhard 1972)
“I am glad that this Foreword gives me an opportunity to make some redress for the narrow-minded approach to Schindler, and indeed to modern architecture in California more generally, of a generation ago.” (Gebhard 1972)
donald leslie johnson
"Neutral did not catch up to to Schindler's spatial, structural and architectonic concept until 1927, Wright in the mid-1930s." (Johnson 2013 p176)
philip johnson
Schindler "was badly overlooked during his lifetime and I must confess my part in it. I thought that Richard Neutra represented much more clearly the International Style which I was busy propagating. Now I believe that Schindler was a much more important figure than I had casually assumed...the most important architect in California in his day." (Steele 2005 p12)
"Neutra was really evil, badmouthed everybody, especially Schindler... Based on these impressions and what Neutra said, I didn't go to see anything else by Schindler." (Steele 2005 p12)
"R.M. Schindler was among the great pioneers of modern architecture in this country. His work was not only great in itself but had a listing influence for the good in later modern development. His single minded devotion to the main principles of architecture was extraordinary and should serve as an example to the younger architects of our time." (McCoy 1960b)
panos koulermos and stephanos polyzoides
"...any critical evaluation of his work by those who have not experienced it becomes problematic..." (Koulermos and Polyzoides 1975)
"A number of modern movement historians and critics tended to perpetuate 'stylistic tyrannies' which as a result, fragmented and alienated the people that shared the original modern movement ethic. The exclusion of Schindler's work, as not being suitable, from the exhibition of modern architecture organized by Philip Johnson and Henry Russell Hitchcock at the Museum of Modern Art in New York--1931, is a clear indication of this attitude." (Koulermos and Polyzoides 1975)
christopher long
"...although the spatial effects [Loos and Schindler] achieved were analogous, Loos established his interlocking rooms through the use of walls and floors; his furnishings, whether built-in or freestanding, serve only in their traditional role as accessories, not as constructive members. Schindler's achievement was to weld the two together to achieve unified settings, which, in their own way, were as complete and rigorous as any Viennese interior at the turn of the century." (Long 1999)
richard longstreth
"...Schindler must stand as a major figure in the his-tory of modernism, not just in the United States, but internation-ally." (Longstreth 1996 265)
"Anyone who has been in a good Schindler house...knows how extraordinarily rich, how complex, how engaging the experience can be." (Longstreth 1996 265)
henry van buren magonigle
Architect Henry Van Buren Magonigle described recent Southern California houses by Richard Neutra and Rudolf Schindler as the ‘aberrations’ of ‘Nordic cultists’, fit only for ‘that strange migratory breed whose spoor is the empty can. . . . Such habitations . . . do not seem to me to be [fit] for substantial people of any nation’ (Magonigle 1935, p. 395, as quoted by Eggener 2006).
lionel march
Schindler's human-scaled approach to design was published two years before Corbusier's (March 1995 p88)
esther mccoy
"His buildings were delicately weighted and balanced, and the full bearing load and tension integrity of each member was brought into play without calling attention to its performance." (McCoy 1960 p182)
"The shape of architecture in California has been largely determined by several men...[t]hese pioneers of contemporary architecture are Bernard R. Maybeck of the Bay Area, William Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene of Pasadena, Irving J. Gill of San Diego, R. M. Schindler and Richard J. Neutra of Los Angeles, and Frank Lloyd Wright...California became the seedbed for contemporary architecture." (McCoy 1956 p14)
"His days went like this. He rose around ten. He went for breakfast to Googies or Barney's Beanery, or some small place—someone saw him once eating breakfast at the Tale of the Pup. Then he came back to the office and went over drawings—and the many changes—with the draftsmen. He made his calls to the sub-contractors, and about one o-clock was off to the building sites. He came back at five or six, dirty and exhausted. Prince, the German Shepard one of his friends had left with him and never picked up, ran through the swinging door to his water bowl in the bathroom, and then out through the sliding glass to the patio to roll over and over on the grass. Then to the phone calls to subcontracts started. Finally he came to the boards to go over the drawings with us. ... Always after his dinner he went to the boards to make changes." (McCoy 1995 p260)
"He was genial with his draftsmen. He was snarling with the subcontractors." (McCoy 1995 p 260)
elizabeth moule
"Labeled alternatively International Style, De Stijl, Functionalist, and Neo-Plastic, his work defies these relations." (Moule 1995 p189)
richard neutra
"Creative thinker and prolific pioneering practioner in architectural space play, R.M. Schindler was equally prominent in the ingenuity of conceiving structure or selecting material and bending it to ever new uses."" (McCoy 1960b)
juan o'gorman
"His great interest and his most important achievements were the planning and building of small houses at a minimum cost, but nevertheless beautiful in their proportions and use of materials, a great quality within the turmoil of commercial competition of our "marvelous civilization." (McCoy 1960b)
stefanos polyzoides
"What Henry Russel Hitchcock later dismissed as 'an Architecture of brutish effects' was one of the most complex and masterful attempts during this century to marry its three most powerful cultural traits: production-based internationalism; traditional vernacular-based localism; and individualism." (Polyzoides 1997 p65-6)
william g. purcell
"It was in the fine art of building that his heart lived, and he never let his own drawings and the pictures of others lead him away from the living objective of true architecture. He realized his buildings in use, under the sky, before they were born." (McCoy 1960b)
john rex
"Michael Schindler's great talent and insight coupled with his own gentle, patient and warm-hearted knowledge of men enabled him to design some of the first buildings and homes that were truly sympathetic to modern men's needs" (McCoy 1960b)
m.d. ross
"Schindler...was a pioneer in another sense—that of introducing the ideas of Central European modernism, modified somewhat by his association with Frank Lloyd Wright." (Ross 1961 p 95)
lionel march and judith scheine
"Schindler was perceived as not worthy of serious consideration as an architect partly because he acted as his own contractor, working more as an artist/builder than a s a more conventional professional architect." (March and Scheine 1995 p8)
"A difficult, complex and enormously vital personality emerges from a study of Schindler, a personality reflected in the body of work itself." (March and Scheine 1995 p9)
judith scheine
Schindler's architecture was "...not dependent on any one building system, but flexible enough to incorporate whatever was cheap and useful, with its emphasis on interior spatial development and complex sections rather than on system or style..." (Scheine 1998 p37)
"...it may be the apparent diversity in the work that has made it difficult to assess Schindler's achievements." (Scheine 1998 p37)
"With the emergence of post-modernism in the late 1960s and 1970s, much broader interests in what work is architecturally interesting and noteworthy have made it possible for Schindler's work to receive more attention." (Scheine 1998 p39)
kathryn smith
"The way [he designed the Kings Road House] was radically innovative and prophetic of the modern housing that would evolve several decades later in the wake of Mies van der Rohe and Wright." (Smith 1995 p115)
wayne r. williams
"If the building concepts of the majority of Architects are broader today, it is the result of a few architects who have practived with imagination and virility. R.M. Schindler was one of the more forceful. His influence will be felt by many who do not know his name." (McCoy 1960b)
lebbius woods
Perhaps Schindler's most important legacy is that he was "disillusioned by dogma and formalized solutions."
misc
"In 32 years of professional life, almost all his buildings, except, perhaps, two or three, were executed under his direction by sub-contractors." (McCoy 1960 p150)
He was 5 feet 7 inches in height (McCoy 1960 p150)
Wright's bedroom at Taliesen West appears to be directly influenced by the Kings Road House (Melendo and others 2014 p47)
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