I have always liked the Harris House, or at least what I knew of it. That was limited to the Julius Shulman photographs of the front and the living room (Figs 1 & 2). I wanted to learn more about it, and was delighted to discover what a wonderful design it is and how much I didn’t know.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Sarah Sherman, Reference Librarian and the Getty Research Institute for letting me use Julius Shulman’s Harris House photos. Photos 1,2,5, 6 & 8 are copyright J. Paul Getty Trust. Used with permission. Julius Shulman Photography Archive, Research Library st the Getty Research Institute (204.R.10). Figure 7 is used by permission, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.
Introduction
A good place to start is Schindler’s description of the house, from the January, 1943 issue of arts & architecture magazine 1. Typically for Schindler, he wrote the description all in capital letters.
Special thanks to reader Steve Schuh and his Schindler facebook page for drawing my attention to the recent sales listing of the Kaun property, for visiting the Kaun site and taking this recent photo of the house and property.
Special thanks to reader Marlin Watson for visiting the property and sending me his impressions of its current condition.
Once the system was designed, Schindler played with it.
I have selected 3 Schindler Frame houses as examples, to show how the idea was actually built. I look at them in a cross-section through the living room, the area where Schindler creates the most complex spaces.
Daugherty House, 1945-1946
This is the Schindler Frame house that most closely matches the prototype (figs 1). Here, all the roofs are flat (fig 3), where in other Schindler Frame houses he combined flat with sloping roofs. The large living room (fig 2), 16’ x 20’, has a tall +-10’ ceiling/roof (the construction drawings do not have height dimensions). This house illustrates how the Schindler Frame would be applied to rooms where the tongue and groove roof spans more than its 10’ maximum. Beams are used to break up longer spans.
An old favorite, revisited and rediscovered
I have always liked the Harris House, or at least what I knew of it. That was limited to the Julius Shulman photographs of the front and the living room (Figs 1 & 2). I wanted to learn more about it, and was delighted to discover what a wonderful design it is and how much I didn’t know.
