Schindler House

No living room, no bedrooms. The house did away with the rooms that defined a conventional home. Instead of a living room, dining room, and bedrooms, Schindler designed the residence as a cooperative live/work space meant to be shared by two families at once, each with independent quarters built around communal areas.

Concrete and canvas. Schindler built the walls from concrete and fitted sliding canvas panels in place of solid partitions, an industrial-materials palette that was novel for a house in 1922. The open floor plan let the outdoors flow into the living spaces, integrating the external environment into the residence in a way that had no real precedent in American domestic architecture.

A fight with the building department. When Schindler first submitted his plans, the local planning authorities rejected them, citing the radical, untested method of construction. It took many trips to the planning office and extensive argument before the Building Department was persuaded to approve the design.

The Schindler House is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, formal recognition of its role as a seminal work of early modern architecture and one of the most influential experimental live/work houses of its era.