Richard Neutra

Richard Neutra
Born	April 8, 1892 Leopoldstadt, Vienna
Died	April 16, 1970 Wuppertal, Germany

Richard Joseph Neutra (April 8, 1892 – April 16, 1970) is considered one of modernism's most important architects.

Biography

Neutra was born in Leopoldstadt, the 2nd district of Vienna, Austria Hungary, on April 8, 1892. The future architect was born into a wealthy Jewish family. His Jewish-Hungarian father Samuel Neutra (1844, Hungary  – 1920) was a proprietor of a metal foundry, and his mother, Elizabeth "Betty" Glaser Neutra (1851, Leopoldstadt  – 1905) was a member of the IKG Wien. Richard has 2 brothers who also emigrated to the USA, and a sister who married in Vienna.

Neutra attended to the Sophiengymnasium in Vienna until 1910, and he studied under Adolf Loos at the Vienna University of Technology (1910–1918). He was a student of Max Fabiani and Karl Mayreder. In 1912 he undertook to study trip to Italy and Balkans with Ernst Ludwig Freud (son of Sigmund Freud).

Neutra worked for a time in Germany in the studio of Erich Mendelsohn. He moved to the United States by 1923 and became a naturalized citizen in 1929. Neutra worked briefly for Frank Lloyd Wright before accepting an invitation from his close friend and university companion Rudolf Schindler to work and live communally in Schindler's Kings Road House in California.

In California, he became celebrated for rigorously geometric but airy structures that symbolized a West Coast variation on the mid-century modern residence. In the early 1930s, Neutra's Los Angeles practice trained several young architects who went on to independent success, including Gregory Ain, Harwell Hamilton Harris, and Raphael Soriano.

He was famous for the attention he gave to defining the real needs of his clients, regardless of the size of the project, in contrast to other architects eager to impose their artistic vision on a client. Neutra sometimes used detailed questionnaires to discover his client's needs, much to their surprise. His domestic architecture was a blend of art, landscape and practical comfort.

Neutra had a sharp sense of irony. In his autobiography, Life and Shape, he included a playful anecdote about an anonymous movie producer-client who electrified the moat around the house that Neutra designed for him and had his Persian butler fish out the bodies in the morning and dispose of them in a specially designed incinerator. This was a much-embellished account of an actual client, Josef von Sternberg, who indeed had a moated house but not an electrified one.

The novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand was the second owner of the Von Sternberg House in the San Fernando Valley (now destroyed). A photo of Neutra and Rand at the home was famously captured by Julius Shulman.

Neutra died in Wuppertal, Germany, on April 16, 1970 at the age of 88.

Neutra's early watercolors and drawings, most of them of places he traveled (particularly his trips to the Balkans in WWI) and portrait sketches, showed influence from artists such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele etc. Neutra's sister Josefine, who could draw, is cited as developing Neutra's inclination towards drawing (ref: Thomas Hines) .

Legacy

Neutra's son Dion has kept the Silver Lake offices designed and built by his father open as "Richard and Dion Neutra Architecture" in Los Angeles. The Neutra Office Building is itself listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1980, Neutra's widow donated the Van der Leeuw House (VDL Research House), then valued at $207,500, to California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona) to be used by the university's College of Environmental Design faculty and students.

The revival in the late 90s of mid-century modernism has given new cachet to his work, as with homes and public structures built by the architects John Lautner and Rudolf Schindler.

The typeface family Neutraface, designed by Christian Schwartz for House Industries, was based on Richard Neutra's architecture and design principles.

The Kaufmann Desert House was restored by Marmol Radziner + Associates in the mid 90s.

Lost Works

One of the most famous and most photographed Neutra-designed structures was the Maslon House of Rancho Mirage California, which was infamously demolished in 2002. See Brad Dunning, "A Destruction Site", New York Times, April 21, 2002.

Selected works

• See also: Category: Richard Neutra buildings

Miller House, Palm Springs

• Jardinette Apartments, 1928, Hollywood, California
• Lovell House, 1929, Los Angeles, California
• Von Sternberg House, 1935, San Fernando Valley
• Neutra VDL Studio and Residences (also known as Van der Leeuw House or VDL Research House), 1932, Los Angeles, California
• The Neutra House Project, 1935, Restoration of the Neutra "Orchard House" in Los Altos, California
• Kun House, 1936, Los Angeles, California
• Landfair Apartments, 1937, Westwood, Los Angeles, California
• Strathmore Apartments, 1937, Westwood, Los Angeles, California
• Miller House, 1937, Palm Springs, California
• Windshield House, 1938, Fisher's Island, New York
• Emerson Junior High School, 1938, West Los Angeles, California
• Ward-Berger House, 1939, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California
• Kelton Apartments, Westwood, Los Angeles
• Bonnet House, 1941, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California
• Schmidt House, 1946, Linda Vista, Pasadena, California
• Kaufmann Desert House, 1946, Palm Springs, California
• Bailey House, 1946, Santa Monica, California
• Case Study Houses #6 and #13
• Elkay Apartments, 1948, Westwood, Los Angeles
• Gordon Wilkins House, 1949, South Pasadena, California
• Helburn House, 1950, Bozeman, Montana
• Neutra Office Building — Neutra's design studio from 1950 to 1970
• Moore House, 1952, Ojai, California (received AIA award)
• Perkins House,1952–55, Pasadena, California
• Troxell House, 1956, Pacific Palisades, California
• Kronish House, 1955, Beverly Hills, California
• Clark House, 1957, Pasadena, California
• Airman's Memorial Chapel, 1957, Miramar, California
• Mellon Hall and Francis Scott Key Auditorium, 1958, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland
• Riviera Methodist Church, 1958, Redondo Beach
• Garden Grove Community Church, 1959 (Fellowship Hall and Offices), 1961 (Sanctuary), 1968 (Tower of Hope), Garden Grove, California
• Three senior officer's quarters on Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, 1959
• Bond House, 1960, San Diego, California
• R.J. Neutra Elementary School, 1960, Naval Air Station Lemoore, in Lemoore, California (designed in 1929).
• Los Angeles County Hall of Records, 1962, Los Angeles, California.
• Gettysburg Cyclorama, 1962, Gettysburg National Military Park, Pennsylvania
• Mariners Medical Arts, 1963, Newport Beach, California
• Painted Desert Visitor Center, 1963, Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona
• United States Embassy,(later US Consulate General until 2011), 1959, Karachi, Pakistan
• Kuhns House, 1964, Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California
• Rice House, 1964, Richmond, Virginia
• VDL II Research House, 1964, (rebuilt with son Dion Neutra) Los Angeles, California
• Rentsch House, 1965, Wengen near Berne in Switzerland; Landscape architect: Ernst Cramer
• Bucerius House, 1965, Brione sopra Minusio in Switzerland; Landscape architect: Ernst Cramer
• Delcourt House, 1968–69, Croix, Nord, France

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  Cyclorama Building, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

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  Jardinette Apartments, Hollywood

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  Kaufmann House, Palm Springs, California.

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  Garden Grove Community Church, Garden Grove, CA

Publications by Neutra

• 1927: Wie Baut Amerika? (How America Builds) (Julius Hoffman)
• 1930: Amerika: Die Stilbildung des neuen Bauens in den Vereiningten Staaten (Anton Schroll Verlag)
• 1935: "New Elementary Schools for America". Architectural Forum 65 (1): 25–36. January 1935. 
• 1948: Architecture of Social Concern in Regions of Mild Climate (Gerth Todtman)
• 1951: Mysteries and Realities of the Site (Morgan & Morgan)
• 1954: Survival Through Design (Oxford University Press)
• 1956: Life and Human Habitat (Alexander Koch Verlag).
• 1961: Welt und Wohnung (Alexander Kock Verlag)
• 1962: Life and Shape: an Autobiography (Appleton-Century-Crofts), reprinted 2009 (Atara Press)
• 1962: Auftrag für morgen (Claassen Verlag)
• 1962: World and Dwelling (Universe Books)
• 1970: Naturnahes Bauen (Alexander Koch Verlag)
• 1971: Building With Nature (Universe Books)
• 1974: Wasser Steine Licht (Parey Verlag)
• 1977: Bauen und die Sinneswelt (Verlag der Kunst)
• 1989: Nature Near: The Late Essays of Richard Neutra (Capra Press)

Other sources

• McCoy, Esther (1960). Five California Architects. Reinhold Publishing. ISBN 0275717208. 
• * reprinted in 1975 by Praeger
• Hines, Thomas (1982). Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195030281. 
• * reprinted in 1994 by the University of California Press
• * reprinted in 2006 by Rizzoli Publications
• Lavin, Sylvia (December 1999). "Open the Box: Richard Neutra and the Psychology of the Domestic Environment". Assemblage (The MIT Press) 40 (40): 6–25. doi:10.2307/3171369. JSTOR 3171369. 
• Lamprecht, Barbara (2000). Richard Neutra: Complete Works. Taschen. ISBN 3822866229. 
• Lamprecht, Barbara (2004). Richard Neutra, 1892–1970: Survival Through Design. Taschen. ISBN 3822827738. 
• Lavin, Sylvia (2005). Form Follows Libido: Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture. MIT Press. ISBN 0262122685. 
• Cronan, Todd (July 2011). "Danger in the Smallest Dose: Richard Neutra's Design Theory". Design and Culture (Berg Publishers) 3 (2): 165–191. doi:10.2752/175470811X13002771867806. 

External links

• Finding Aid for the Richard and Dion Neutra Papers, Special Collections, Young Research Library, UCLA.
• Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design
• Neutra at GreatBuildings.com
• Neutra at modernsandiego.com
• Neutra biography at r20thcentury.com
• info and photos from Winkens.ie
• History, plans and photographs of the VDL I & VDL II Research Houses
• Neutra VDL Studio and Residences iPad App

See also: Neutra (disambiguation)