ABSTRACT
The twentieth century is often described as the age of democracy. It might be described more accurately as the age of democracy and of the failure of democracy. Similarly, the architecture of the twentieth century might be described as an architecture that embodied both democracy and the failure of democracy. Space was also an important concept for the democratization of architecture. In the nineteenth century, people began to call the interstices between objects spaces and to regard them as important. By comparison, there were still vestiges of the academy in contemporary French modernism. There, architects accorded greater importance to objects than space, valued depth more than surfaces, and were more intent on giving powerful expression to in situ concrete than exploring the possibilities of industrialization. The move was quite significant for Schindler from the perspective of both his personal life and his architecture.
