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
Turning the corner
It doesn’t occur in the McAlmon apartment, but many of Schindler’s Plaster Skin buildings have two-sided cantilevers, cantilevers that wrap around a corner. Some examples are
Figure 1 Oliver House 1933-1934
front corner above street level garage 1
Figure 2 Buck House 1934
overall front, house on left and apartment on 
right
Figure 3 Buck House
detail of front at Dining
Figure 4 McAlmon House 1935
front entry of the house (not the apartment) 2
As always, Schindler puts the drama up front. These two sided 
cantilevers are at, or on the way to, the front door.
Applied to our sample building, a double cantilever looks like Figures 5 & 6.