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Built on a hillside in the (Silver Lake) district of Los Angeles, this is one of the few apartment buildings designed by an architect better known for his single-family houses. These terraced dwellings, arranged in two parallel rows with common stairs between, appear to be two lar
ge houses, each with a garage at street level. In fact, there are 7 apartments and, while there is a generic schema of dwellings opening to terraces, each apartment is different. Schindler applied the terraced concept frequently in his early houses including the Wolfe house on Catalina (1928), the Elliot and Oliver houses (1930 & 1931), and the Van Patten house (1934). Common to all of these examples is a formal strategy of creating cantilevered terraces that appear to be drawn out--like the drawers of a chest-- in two directions from the virtual volume of the building. Bubeshko is literally an enclave of little terraced houses, individually different, collectively unified in an overall terraced form of overlapping and interpenetrating spaces and elements and connected by a common stair. Schindler's unique use of wood frame and stucco construction with ample use of glass and a formal preoccupation with corner articulation results in an architecture with definite Neo-Plastic stylistic overtones, but as well, incorporating ideas from Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard Neutra. Schindler's use of economical wood frame construction to achieve a modern style with expansive glass, cantilevers, and flat roofs often resulted in leaky buildings, and other problems so that maintenance was always a continuing and often expensive proposition. In spite of this, Bubeshko is in good condition today, a testament not only to a succession of dedicated residents, but also to the fact that the apartments, though small and unconventional, are spatially interesting and highly desirable. David Gebhard, Schindler, Viking Press, New York, 1972, pp. 164-65.
