What’s this? Not just one, but two FLW houses on the same trip? Yes!

I’d first visited the Hollyhock house in 1996, at the tail end of a trip to the LA area. I had a Monday free, and while I knew the house would be closed that day a friend and I drove out there to look at the house through the chain link fences.   I had been to visit a few Maya sites the year before, and Wright’s homage to their architectural language was decidedly present, and, at the same time, decidedly something quite distinct. Spare in places, rich in others, its concrete volumes had a presence. Now, some near-20 years later, there was no way I wasn’t going to visit this house, and get to see the inside.

So it was that once again I was with a friend at the Hollyhock house, stepping through the sculptural concrete front doors. The house is more formally known as the Barnsdall house, named after its owner Aline Barnsdall, but the name Hollyhock comes from Aline’s favourite flower, the hollyhock, that Wright used over, and over, and over, and over, and over again as an abstract motif throughout the house. Where the textile block houses went for continuous textural surfaces, the Hollyhock house uses much more spare forms as a foil to sculptural flourishes. And here is much of where the richness of the house develops, with Wrightian touches of stained glass, intricate furniture, carved pillars, and more, all done in and with geometric patterns that possess their seemingly improbable mix of simplicity and complexity.

And the hearth. Oh that hearth. This is the thing that really drew me to the house in the first place, so many years ago. It is grand, it is surrounded by custom furniture, it too has a geometric pattern embossed upon it, but it is also surrounded by a pool of water, with a skylight above… all designed to catch the moonlight and reflect both it and the light of the fire off the water and glint it off that massive sculptural face. I don’t know if it ever worked as well as envisioned, but the thought of it is quite something.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures on the inside, so for a great interior and exterior tour, check out this link.

Two bonus items here… one, is that the project manager for the Hollyhock house was Rudolph Schindler. (!) Second, a game of where’s Waldo – you can see the Ennis house from the Hollyhock grounds:

The next stop in my LA trip retrospective is a visit to the Schindler house. Built some 90+ years ago, it doesn’t look like it was built 90+ years ago… mainly because it broke all the molds and came to define what would come to be known as the modern “California” style home.

At least, in most ways. The house was decidedly un-traditional in its layout. For one, it was built for two families, each with a couple of studio rooms in separate L-shaped wings (each with their own patio/courtyard), combined at a knuckle where there was a communal kitchen. For two, Schindler, along with later house inhabitant Neutra, believed in the fresh air principle and so there was no traditional bedroom, only two, open air sleeping “pods” atop the house. That one didn’t prove to be all that popular or successful.

The house did, however, usher in open- and flexible-living, the extensive use of glazing and sliding panels for indoor/outdoor living, clerestory windows, and unadorned planes that defined a crisp form.

The house has a clarity to its language and derivation of space that is powerful. The thick, tilt-up concrete walls cement the house firmly to the ground, and are perfectly counterpointed on the other faces with ample glazing and views to the private gardens. The frosted glazing set into the heavy concrete walls (in those slots seen in the images above) are an inspired touch, adding their luminous quality to the room and working to actually emphasize the mass of the wall. The spatial volumes, of rooms, of walls, of fireplaces, of window bays, all interlock and intersect to create a richness of experience.

Many details, such as the raw and exposed freestanding copper piping in the bathroom that formed the supply for both the sink and the shower, all made of concrete, are fanciful touches that are raw and elegant at the same time. Other details, such as the flat roof and clerestory windows, were defectively ahead of their time and suffered much leaks and wear and tear. The house was a laboratory for a new style of living and building, and it shows.

And what a great testbed it was, and is.

Continuing my trip through Los Angles, tonight we stop at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Designed by Raphael Moneo, it, like many a cathedral, is an impressive and imposing and powerful space. It also, like the Sagrada Família, is decidedly untraditional in its language and the sculpting of its space. Yet, at the same time it also most decidedly follows in lockstep the long tradition and form of the catholic cathedral, with a powerful nave filled with light from high-set glazing (here done in wonderful translucent alabaster panels rather than stained glass (and I say wonderful despite being a stained glass fan!)) with aisles on each side accessed through a permeable structure.

The structure here, however, is non-symmetrical and also possesses a thickness and depth to its form that is quite different from the gothic norm of a row of columns and vaults. This mass heightens the solidity and “specialness” of the nave, and intensifies the experience of the traversal into the sacred space. It also inverts the idea of chapels in the apse or aisles facing inward; here, from the aisles these blocks are carved out to form the alcoves (also illuminated from above) that contain chapels, exhibitions, confessionals, or, still striking, nothing at all.

Architecture doesn’t need to copy a look to be related to the past and to its history, or to the history of the institution, or the region, or the surrounding buildings. Along with being a good work in its own right, this cathedral is a great illustration of that principle. It carries the heart of the tradition in its bones, expressed in a new, dynamic, and ultimately satisfying way. And along the way it creates new moments and opportunities, enriching the canon and adding something to the dialogue and journey that is architecture.