Light and Open

Kaye believes tearing down the American Colonial next to the Schindler will only fuel “the unstoppable cancer of development. Soon there will be only the Schindler House, a lone oddity lacking architectural companionship,” he says. Although he would like to save the 1936 structure, he believes that another Richard Loring development nearby on Havenhurst Drive should be the template for what happens at 825 N. Kings Road. With the city’s intervention, that other project was limited to 12 condominiums, leaving room for a pocket park to cover half of the lot. Something similar, Kaye says, should be done at 825.

Kaye might have an ally in West Hollywood Mayor Jeffrey Prang. “The standard L.A. approach of lot-line to lot-line density may not wash in this location, and I would not support any proposal that negatively impacts the cultural and historical significance of the Schindler House. I am aware that there is a scaling back from 23 units. But 18 is still a lot,” he says.

For now, Lorcan O’Herlihy’s drawings and models are as conceptual as the presentations in “Preserving Schindler’s Paradise.” The debate that both have spawned is certain to flourish, if for no other reason than the plain fact that, cramped and enclosed and immured as it is, Rudolf Schindler’s house continues to inspire and challenge our ideas about how we live. “It is not just about the Schindler House,” Peter Noever concludes, “but about how our society behaves towards all buildings with such strong cultural identity. It is the same if it happens in Japan, or Vienna, or the United States.”