It all started at the corner
I am fascinated by the front corner of the Oliver House. What makes it so dramatic and interesting? It looks so simple, yet there is something about it I can’t quite figure out. After a lot of thinking and analysis, I’m still not sure I know what’s happening at this corner, but I do have some things to say about it.
Continue reading RM Schindler’s Oliver House – Introduction, part 1 of 5
Another passion, another logo
Since it looks like I’m not going to be stopping this Schindler thing any time soon, I decided to give it a name and a logo. I decided to call it the RM Schindler Project. The logo is meant to resemble Schindler’s houses, the Oliver House most specifically. The first and last letters of Schindler projecTinterlock to form the building. Horizontal ribbons of windows, based on the Schindler 4′ module system, spell out the intermediate letters. Like the Oliver House, this building is seen from below, looking up, to give everything a dramatic angle and plenty of movement.
More on the Oliver House, dramatic angles and interlocking letter forms in the Oliver House analysis, coming soon
Second chance to get a detail right
I try to think of everything when I do construction drawings, but sometimes I miss something. When I did the construction drawings for our two story deck (see previous articles) I did careful drawings of the handrails. I forgot, however, to show how the top of the rails met at the corners. In the absence of a detail,our contractor Jack Murphy did the corners the way everyone does them. He mitered them together (first photo).
I had wanted the corners to overlap, the way all 
the other pieces of the deck do. I always felt a little disappointed that I had missed this.
In the years since the deck was built, the sun and rain haven’t been kind to the handrails. We recently decided to replace them, this time using non-rotting trex. I finally got to fix the corners!
It’s a detail no one else notices I’m 
sure, but I feel better knowing its there.
Photos:
Top: Mitered old corner in wood
Second from Top: New overlapping corner in trex.
Third from Top: Inside corner-notched, not mitered
Bottom: View from below, with your head tilted way back, looking straight up. Overlapping corners seen in the context of the other overlapping connections.