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Richard Neutra

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File:Neutra.jpg
Richard Neutra on the cover of Time Magazine, August 15, 1949.

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

Biography

Neutra was born in Vienna. He studied under Adolf Loos at the Technical University of Vienna, was influenced by Otto Wagner, and 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 represented 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.

There is a story about Ayn Rand, the second owner of the von Sternberg house in the San Fernando Valley (now destroyed), told by Neutra's contractor Fordyce "Red" Marsh: Once when Neutra took a group of people to see the von Sternberg house, she spotted the tall, handsome Red for the first time. She brushed past Neutra and grabbed the unsuspecting Red by the shoulders, exclaiming: "You are the physical embodiment of Howard Roark!" Red knew nothing of the hero architect of Rand's famous novel The Fountainhead and its architect-hero Howard Roark and was bewildered by her actions. Neutra, feeling excluded, gathered up his group and left. (A photo of Neutra and Rand at the home was famously captured by Julius Shulman.)

Neutra died in Wuppertal, Germany, in 1970.

Legacy

Neutra's son Dion has kept the Silverlake 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.

Selected works


  • Cyclorama Building, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
    Cyclorama Building, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
  • Jardinette Apartments, Hollywood
    Jardinette Apartments, Hollywood
  • Kaufmann House, Palm Springs, California.
    Kaufmann House, Palm Springs, California.

Publications by Neutra

  • 1927: Wie Baut Amerika? (How America Builds) (Julius Hoffman)
  • 1935: "New Elementary Schools for America". Architectural Forum. 65 (no. 1): 25–36. January 1935. {{cite journal}}: |issue= has extra text (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |journal= (help)
  • 1951: Mysteries and Realities of the Site (Morgan & Morgan)
  • 1954: Survival Through Design (Oxford University Press)
  • 1962: Life and Shape: an Autobiography (Appleton-Century-Crofts)

Notes

  1. ^ Leet, Stephen (2004). Richard Neutra's Miller House. Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 1568982747.
  2. ^ Neumann, Dietrich, ed. (2001). Richard Neutra's Windshield House. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300092032. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ Wyatt, Edward (October 31, 2007). "A Landmark Modernist House Heads to Auction". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-05-24.
  4. ^ Judith Gura (May 1, 2008), Richard Neutra's Kaufmann House, ARTINFO, retrieved 2008-05-14{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  5. ^ Troxell Residence at LandLiving.com
  6. ^ Eastman, Janet (April 17, 2008). "The clock is ticking for Richard Neutra's VDL Research House II". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2008-05-24.
  7. ^ Ayyüce, Orhan (Mar 17, 2008). "Neutra's VDL House; v. Hard Times". archinect.com. Retrieved 2008-05-24.
  8. ^ VDL House website by Cal Poly Pomona College of Environmental Design

Other sources

  • McCoy, Esther (1960). Five California Architects. Reinhold Publishing.
    • 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 (Dec. 1999). "Open the Box: Richard Neutra and the Psychology of the Domestic Environment". Assemblage. 40: 6–25. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |journal= (help)
  • 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.
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