The reputation of Rudolph Schindler languished after his death. He was damned by the faint praise of his mentor, Frank Lloyd Wright, who downplayed Schindler’s contribution to his own projects, and overshadowed by a contemporary, Richard Neutra. Designed as a shared studio and home, the Schindler-Chace House, also known as the Kings Road House or simply the Schindler House, is radical yet understated, complex but not complicated. It became a prototype for a recognizably Californian style of building. The concrete foundation/floor and wood frame provide 2,500 square feet (762 sq m) of living space, and an open “sleeping basket” on the main roof echoes the ground floor design. Three interlocking L-shapes pivot from a central fireplace and provide a system of three studios with bathrooms. Each studio is enclosed on three sides by concrete walls; the fourth is open and faces a communal patio and outdoor fireplace. The sunken lawn beyond repeats patterns from the house. Schindler created shelter and space through variance of the flat roofline. Ground-floor rooms rise to a clerestory window ventilation system, and open through sliding canvas doors into the enclosed garden. Japanese elements complete the house’s grammar. Redwood-and-glass corner window-walls flip and repeat in the adjacent space. Concrete walls are panelized with vertical glass slits between. The house, located in West Hollywood, unites the outside world with a shared yet individual interior life. (Denna Jones)

Chemosphere

This octagonal wonder is John Lautner’s best-known house. Leonard Malin, an aerospace engineer, commissioned the house to perch 100 feet (30.5 m) above the home of his parents-in-law. Clearly, client and architect were well-matched as the house is an engineering wonder. The fact that it is sited on a steep hillside in an earthquake zone adds kudos. Lautner’s site solution was a wood-beam skeleton-cage tied to a steel compression ring mounted on a 5-foot-wide (1.5 m) cast-concrete column with eight steel supports to each vertices. The beams create the ceiling and surge toward the central skylight, like a whale’s ribcage. In a nod to Exhibitionist style, a hinged beam reveals a one-way glass into the shower. Windows circle the octagon equator and separate the roof from the base. All that was left was how to get inside; this was solved by a steep-grade funicular and skybridge.

In 2001 the firm Escher GuneWardena renovated the house for new owner, publisher Benedikt Taschen. Features dropped because they were too costly or technologically impossible in 1960, when Malin’s residence was completed, were reintroduced: razor-thin slate replaced tile; framed windows became frameless glass; ash displaced the vinyl kitchen counter. (Denna Jones)

Dominus Winery

The Napa Valley is the setting for this building that, though traditional in technique, seems somehow to break all the rules. The Dominus Winery, completed in 1997, was the first of a new generation of wineries in which architecture is asked to add another layer of prestige and glamour to the vintages produced. The massive size of the Dominus building—330 feet (100 m) long, 82 feet (25 m) wide, and 30 feet (9 m) high—is tempered by the use of local basalt, ranging in color from black to dark green. This basalt is packed with differing degrees of density into gabions—wire containers most often used to shore up river banks and sea walls. Here, the Swiss firm Herzog and de Meuron treats the functional gabions as aesthetic objects. The differing densities of stone allow light to pass through, creating delicate patterns within during the hot California daytime and allowing the internal artificial lighting to leak out during the night so that the stones seem to emit starlight. The gabions also work as a thermostat, keeping the temperatures in the storage areas at an even level. The firm is probably best known for their reimagination of a disused power station in London: the Tate Modern. The same understanding of linear geometries can be seen in both Tate Modern and the Dominus Winery, where a simple harmony is achieved through the interplay of horizontal shapes and spaces, rather than by means of extravagant curves or other aggressive architectural gestures. (Gemma Tipton)