“I’m a person of traditions. I love repeating things year after year. We really recover and hide out here on the weekends, and it’s the gathering place for my family,” says Pamela Shamshiri, perfectly encapsulating the feeling of stepping inside her Los Angeles home, a Rudolph M. Schindler midcentury modern marvel. Pamela, cofounder of Commune and founder of Studio Shamshiri, brilliantly walks a fine line in this indelibly personal home. Rife with attention to detail and ceremonial acts, it feels entirely contemporary and lived-in—a refuge for her and her boys—yet it pays deep and thoughtful homage to the great architect whose vision delivered it.

Life is everywhere in this pristine home—a perfect contradiction. It’s in the open cans of spray paint, left around for teenagers to graffiti the pool with. It’s in the living area’s cowhide rugs, which are easily folded up to allow for indoor skateboarding (!), big family gatherings, or yoga classes. Guitars and music sheets commandeer a corner of the living room, while Pamela’s collections amassed from travel, like talismans from ancient places, mingle with ceremonial sage and beautiful fruit-filled wooden vessels from Africa.

What I love most is sensing the devotion and patience that brought this storied house back to life; it took Pamela seven years, after all. While she had wanted a slice of Los Angeles history to restore, she wasn’t sure if she was up for the scope of this project. Every window and every door needed replacing, and layers of paint and drywall obscured so much of its original beauty. But she decided to take on the challenge, and it became a springboard, informing her work at Commune as she dug deep into Schindler’s archives. “There were so many lessons that I took with me,” she reflects, most important of which was Schindler’s devotion to humble materials compellingly deployed; she’s embraced it ever since. “Things feel more approachable and relaxed when you use a mix of high and low. I think if it’s all high, it’s not as easy to live in,” she says.

“I began embracing these idiosyncratic solutions and using a mix of really thoughtful design with pretty low materials.”

This was the philosophy that underpinned the renovation of the house, which also happens to be one of Schindler’s last works. To get back to the essence of this conceptually brilliant, materially humble home, Pamela painstakingly stripped away layer upon layer of drywall and paint instead of adding, a process she refers to as “The Excavation.” Incredibly, hidden beneath the drywall, she unearthed the architect’s notes on the project—down to the most minute of details—written on the original plywood walls. She also removed the marble fireplace mantel, under which lay Schindler’s dramatic steel fireplace, dormant and intact.

Though Schindler’s fingerprints are all over the home, it is animated by Pamela and her family. She doesn’t live in the shadow of its past. Infused with layers of rambunctious teenage boys, it has been brought up to contemporary ideals in the kitchen and bathroom, both of which she enlarged and splurged on. Paying historical homage and living today need not be mutually exclusive, she maintains: “It’s important for people to see that you can respectfully have a great kitchen and great bathroom and live in a historic home.”

What truly defines this home is the surrounding nature, amplified by the angular, diagonal windows that draw your eyes out and into the canyon. It feels quite a bit like perching in a glorious treehouse. The geometry of the architecture, built-ins, and furnishings creates a dynamic where they nearly recede, allowing textiles and art to come into focus. More striking is the adherence to tonality that Pamela embraced. Taking cues from Schindler’s celebrated plywood, nearly every surface in the house amplifies the hue of that warm, simple wood.

The architect’s fascination with caves as the original dwelling proved irresistible fodder for Pamela, who loves camping and the majestic sequoia indigenous to California. She mined these touchstones, along with Anasazi cultures, to inform her approach and celebrate the spirit of this home. “It’s such a California house. You sit there and see a treescape out every window. From any direction you look, it’s a whole vista of trees.” All of these ingredients formed the narrative of this historic and highly personal place. “It’s a lot like cooking,” says Pamela. “If you get the right ingredients and measure correctly.” And that she does, fusing high design with low materials. Schindler surely would have approved.

“While we’re Stewards of the Historic Place, we had to make it our own.”