The Lovell Beach House

The most important realizations of Rudolf Schindler are the Lovell Beach House for Dr. Phillip Lovell and his own house in Los Angeles on Kings Road. Especially the beach house reflects the architect's idea of "spatial forms," which has its roots in his teacher Adolf Loos. Lovell Beach House is often referred to as the first house in the international style on the territory of the USA.
Schindler won the commission thanks to his wife Paulina, who met Lovell's wife in an evening course. Dr. Lovell was an avid proponent of a healthy lifestyle - vegetarianism, physical exercises, etc. His personality stands at the roots of modernist architecture in America, as both of his houses transcended local scales and inspired other architects on their way to a new style. The designs of both houses were created in Rudolf Schindler's studio on Kings Road. Disputes over the design of the second house (Lovell's Health House) led to a rift between Schindler and Neutra, and as Schindler recalls, Neutra stole the commission for the second Lovell house from him.
Schindler's design reflects contemporary international views on architecture. In the beach house in Newport, we find motifs from Loos, Corbusier, and even Wright. The evident influence of constructivism is revealed by five spatial reinforced concrete frames that support the Loosian raumplan of the interior rooms. The Corbusian motif of columns and an open plan is emphasized by the flat roof and the unbuilt ground floor.
An unmistakable element, besides the exterior frames, is the two staircases, one of which leads to the representative living room and the other to the back area - the kitchen of the house. The living rooms are situated on the first floor, while the ground floor remains unbuilt and designated for outdoor activities. The ground floor also houses a garage. The arrangement of the internal space refers to Loos's teaching - along the living room on the second floor runs a gallery, from which the residents' bedrooms are accessible. The organic growth of the internal space is projected onto the facade. The motif of dividing glazing and the vernacular articulation of the house's mass refer to the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright. Despite numerous citations and borrowings, the Lovell Beach House is an original work, and especially its constructivist aesthetics has no equal in the history of architecture of family houses.
The house is one of the few family houses in California built using a combination of reinforced concrete skeleton and infill wooden construction. Schindler reportedly chose this solution as protection against earthquakes. The exposed reinforced concrete structure fully met the architect's artistic demands. Schindler would certainly not be satisfied with the current state of the house. His view on building materials, heavily influenced by Wright, was to preserve their original texture. This is very well demonstrated in his own house on Kings Road. The current coating of the beach house, as well as the built-up ground floor and the construction of walls, do not offer the viewer a hundred percent experience as at the time of completion. However, the columns with a grand entrance through the two staircases continue to dominate this beach gem of American architecture of the 1920s.