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“R.M. Schindler was born in Vienna in 1887 and educated at the Bau-(Architektur) schule of the k.k. Technische Hochschule (Polytechnic Institute) in Vienna from 1906–11. Before he had finished his degree there, he enrolled in the k.k. Akademie der bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts) from 1910–13, studying with Otto Wagner, whose ideas about modern architecture permeated the school. Wagner believed that modern materials and methods, not historical styles, should be the source for architectural form.  

Perhaps the biggest influence on the young architect was the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, which he saw in 1911 in the Wasmuth portfolio. There he saw an architecture of space more advanced than even that of his teachers and he went to Chicago in 1914, hoping to work for Wright.  In 1918, Wright finally hired Schindler to work on the Imperial Hotel, leaving him in charge of his office during his travels to Japan; Wright sent Schindler to Los Angeles in 1920 to supervise construction of his most important American commission of the time, the Hollyhock house for oil heiress Aline Barnsdall. Schindler decided to stay in Los Angeles, and built a house and studio for his architectural practice.

Few clients were quite as radical in their tastes as Schindler was himself, but they were largely progressive middle-class intellectuals, with more taste than money. After early experiments with concrete, including the How house (1925) and the Lovell beach house (1923–26), proved too expensive, Schindler developed ways to make inexpensive modern architecture out of cheap materials—stucco and plaster over wood frame—in what he called his 'plaster skin' designs of the 1930s and early 1940s; notable examples include the Oliver (1933–34), Walker (1935) and Wilson (1935–39) houses.”  Judith Sheine