The Modern Interior

interior space was extended outwards into an open area containing a
pool, along one side of which Mies constructed a marble wall with a long,
low bench at its base. The emphatically horizontal roof of the building
appeared to float over the interior space of the pavilion which, itself,
was defined by its strong sense of horizontality in combination with the
architect’s skilful articulation of space, light and texture. Inside the pavilion
Mies positioned a chair he had designed especially for it. His modern
‘throne’, made up of a padded leather seat and back supported by an
elegant steel substructure, brought together the qualities of solemnity,
dignity and lightness in a single sitting object. Later Mies’s Barcelona chair
would become an iconic object used in numerous corporate reception
areas and architects’ homes.
It was not only European artists and architects who set out to explore
the idea of the abstract interior defined by its commitment to space, light,
colour and texture. The emergence of the abstract interior in the us in the
inter-war years was the result, for the most part, of European immigrants
taking it there. A striking example of a building that embraced those ideas
was the house that the Austrian architect Rudolph M. Schindler created in
1922 for himself and his wife Pauline, along with another couple, Marian
and Clyde Chase, in Los Angeles’ Kings Road. It contained shared areas – a
bathroom and kitchen among them – as well as dedicated studio spaces.
The interior’s dominant features were the link the architect created
between the inside and the outside and his desire to make the building’s
internal walls thin and movable such that they would not inhibit the interior’s
open plan. Sliding canvas doors opened from the studios on to patios
to create an inside/outside spatial continuum, reinforced by the presence of
roof canopies over the patios. As it had been in British Arts and Crafts
houses, such as Baillie Scott’s ‘Blackwell’ created two decades earlier, and
the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the early century, the light
entering into the building from outside was carefully controlled. Most
innovative was Schindler’s choice of materials. The floor consisted of a flat
concrete slab and a few solid concrete walls were also included. A threeinch
gap was left between the floor and the walls which the architect filled
either with concrete or with clear, or frosted, glass to create a variety of
degrees of transparency within the interior space. The other, movable walls
were light wooden frames filled with a variety of transparencies provided
by frosted glass, clear glass, and a solid insulation board called ‘Insulite’. 17
In a corner of the living area the architect placed a fireplace adjacent to
a vertical glazed area. The Schindler House took the abstract interior’s 181