Secluded behind a screen of tall bamboo shoots in West Hollywood, Los Angeles, the Kings Road House may be considered the first home ever built in the Modernist style.[1] Designed by Rudolf Schindler in 1921, the architect’s use of tilt-slab concrete construction (highly innovative at the time) and an informal studio layout, set it apart from its contemporaries; indeed, the design would set the tone for other Modernist residential design for decades. During his architectural studies in his hometown of Vienna, Austria, Rudolf Schindler became intent on traveling to the United States to work with Frank Lloyd Wright. He sailed to New York only five months before the outbreak of the First World War; by the war’s end in 1918, he had achieved his goal and joined Wright’s practice. In 1919, Schindler married Sophie Pauline Gibling, a music teacher and political activist from Minneapolis who shared his distaste for traditional institutions – including marriage itself.[2]
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