Lovell vs. Lovell

Abstract

Lovell v. Lovell consists of placing opposite each other, for the same client the projects of two masters of the twentieth century, in different locations of the California of the twenties. The ideas they contain, the concepts of floor use, the view of the house and its open spaces are shaped with similar criteria in close evocative resolutions. With roots in the spatial repertoire rehearsed in the famous Schindler-Chace studio-dwelling in Kings Road, Schindler and Neutra, they form projects which, though they may seem complete opposites rather than composites given the difference in their structures, do indeed enable the same structural strategies to be dealt with. If the Health House was the most important domestic building of its time, which exalted the architecture of its most famous representative, Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler’s Beach House represents, even without the recognition of the critics of its time, a brilliant experiment in International Style from a very early date must be mentioned as a precursor of the Modern Movement in California. The concept of sleeping in the open air in sleeping porches, in empty spaces shaped as all-enveloping of the closures, is common to both buildings for the Lovells. The five points of architecture are developed in an individual, Californian language. Alert to the topography of the ground, beach or hillside, to the look out of the house to the horizon from emptied spaces in the structure, both to the creation of open-air spaces conceived between the interior and the outside enable them to enjoy the warm, sunny Pacific climate.