The Adjacent Guide
PlaceA house from 1922 that still feels ahead of the one you live in.
Schindler House · MAK Center for Art and Architecture · West Hollywood, California
R.M. Schindler’s house on Kings Road is considered one of the world’s first modern houses. A century later, it still makes most new homes look timid about the line between inside and outside.
Most houses from 1922 are admired for how well they have aged. This one is admired for how early it arrived. Schindler built it using a slab-tilt concrete process, and the house redefined how public and private, and indoor and outdoor, space could relate.
Rudolph and Pauline Schindler made it a gathering place for artists, musicians, poets and writers, and it still works that way. Today it is the headquarters of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, which runs exhibitions and programs there, so a visit usually brings something new alongside the building itself.
Less a period piece than an argument that still holds.
The reason to go is quieter than the history. Walk through slowly, notice how often you are neither fully inside nor fully outside, and then think about the house you live in.
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