MAK Center Architecture Tours
The MAK Center hosts an annual architecture tour exploring significant and under-recognized modernist landmarks throughout Los Angeles and Southern California. These neighborhood-specific tours place these innovative and important homes in dialogue with one another and offer insights into architectural style, materials, time period, and scale. Residences designed by Gregory Ain, Harwell Hamilton Harris, John Lautner, Richard Neutra, R.M. Schindler, and Raphael Soriano, among many others, have been featured on the tours.
The tours promote appreciation of Los Angeles’s signification architectural heritage while provide vital support for the MAK Center. Tour tickets go directly to advancing the MAK Center’s mission and public activation of three Schindler landmarks: the Schindler House, Mackey Apartments and Fitzpatrick-Leland House.
To learn more about the tours or inquire about getting involved, reach out to office[at]makcenter.org
May 17, 2025
Spring 2025
The MAK Center Architecture Tour Spring 2025 features R.M. Schindler’s How House (1925) and Yates Studio (1938-1947), Gregory Ain’s Orans House (1941), and John Lautner’s Reiner-Burchill House, commonly called Silvertop (1964). A ticketed reception followed at the Cano House (2025), a contemporary residence designed by Diego Cano-Lasso.
AUGUST 17, 2024
Summer 2024
Schindler’s Goodwin House (1941), Presburger House (1945), and Kallis House (1946) are joined by Lautner’s Jacobsen House (1947). A ticketed reception followed at the contemporary Laurel Hill Residence (2019) designed by Assembledge+
These houses, all dating from the 1940s, explore Schindler and Lautner’s use of interlocking geometries. Sloping walls, clerestory windows, and unique roof frames are used to navigate hillside terrain and capture dramatic views of the city.
DECEMBER 2, 2023
Winter 2023
The winter tour features the homes of three contemporary architects: Thom Mayne, Charles Ward, and Clive Wilkinson. From the construction of a private canyon to the design of a spiritual retreat, the houses by these Los Angeles-based architects provide examples of domestic experiments and creative freedom unfolding within the very personal settings of their own homelife and family.
AUGUST 26, 2023
Summer 2023
The MAK Architecture Tour Summer 2023 toured the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles through the Richard Neutra’s Kambara Residence (1960), Gregory Ain’s Avenel Cooperative House (1947), Harwell Hamilton Harris’s Hawk House (1939), and Ain’s Greene Residence (1952, restored 1952).
Coined the “second generation” by architectural historian Esther McCoy, Ain and Harris were apprentices to Neutra and R.M. Schindler and responded to their mentors’ social and design philosophies while developing their own unique practices.
DECEMBER 18, 2022
2022
R.M. Schindler did not believe in a formulaic design for his architecture, and would design custom homes tailored to the site and client. In the period of the 1930’s, middle-class families could also afford to hire architects for individually designed homes, constructed from the ground up on difficult lots. For his hillside houses, Schindler describes three different “form schemes”: “balancing above the hill, cascading down the slope, and rising up in a counter motion.”
Together, the Oliver House (1934), Walker House (1936), Southall House (1938), and Wilson House (1938) showcase Schindler’s single-family homes built in the 1930s developed for the particularities of each client, including specialized spaces such as ikebana rooms and private music studios.
