Esther Kim's Reflection

Schindler House Reflection

    When I was first introduced to the Schindler House in class, I never expected there to be such an historical landmark in Los Angeles. The only historical architectures that I thought significant in LA were the buildings on Bunker Hill or Watts Towers. As I researched more about the Schindler House, I learned that it was such an avant garde modern architecture back in the 20’s. When I visited the Schindler House, I was very fascinated with the structure of the house. The idea of it being studios for artists made it more interesting. Like it described in the research that I did, the space, form and the way the light came into the house was very meticulously thought out and harmonized well. I didn’t notice when I first arrived to the Schindler House but as I was leaving I looked around where the house was located and I felt that it was unfortunate how the city treats history. The house was sited at what seemed like a random residential street. Even though there was nothing was around the house besides cornfields back when Schindler built it, it would have been more sensible to exhibit the house in a better way.

    The idea our group had formed based on the Schindler House was to film a movie that based on the story of the two couples that actually lived in the house. We decided to do a silent film so the film could be more focused on the essence of the house without any distractions. We thought that the idea of incorporating music from the 20’s when the house was built would make the film seem more based on the couples. We incorporated historical information from the 20’s into the film to give background of some political and social issues of that time. Our film featured three very different individual artists who lived together under the same space. We wanted to portray individuality and community within one space.

    I think our film captured the house very well but our storyline could have been more elaborated. Also instead of having a separate board to show the historical information of the 20s that was briefly shown in the film we could have figured out a way to put enter text into the film itself. LA past lives was one of the most interesting and beneficial LAS classes I took. It was a great experience of learning in depth about Los Angeles’ historical architecture, the Schindler House.