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Richard Neutra

Richard Neutra on the cover of Time Magazine,

August 15, 1949.
April 8, 1892
Born
Leopoldstadt, Vienna
April 16, 1970
Died
Wuppertal, Germany

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

Contents
[hide]

 1 Biography
 2 Legacy
 3 Selected works
 4 Publications by Neutra
 5 Notes
 6 Other sources
 7 External links

[edit] Biography
Neutra was born in Leopoldstadt, the 2nd district of Vienna, Austria Hungary, on April 8,
1892. He was born into both-Jewish wealthy family. His Jewish-Hungarian father Samuel
Neutra (1844, Hungary  – 1920)[1] was a proprietor of a metal foundry, and his mother,
Elizabeth "Betty" Glaser[2]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.

He 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. Neutra was also influenced by Otto Wagner without being his disciple. In
1912 he undertook to study trip to Italy and Balkans with Ernst Ludwig Freud (son of
Sigmund Freud).

He was also 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
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.

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) .

[edit] 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.[3][4]

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

[edit] 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
 Miller House,[5] 1937, Palm Springs, California
 Windshield House,[6] 1938, Fisher's Island, New York
 Emerson Junior High School, 1938, West Los Angeles, California
 Strathmore Apartments, 1938, Westwood, Los Angeles, California
 Ward-Berger House, 1939, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California
 Bonnet House, 1941, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California
 Schmidt House, 1946, Linda Vista, Pasadena, California
 Kaufmann Desert House,[7][8] 1946, Palm Springs, California
 Bailey House, 1946, Santa Monica, California
 Case Study Houses #6 and #13
 Gordon Wilkins House, 1949, South Pasadena, California[9][10]
 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,[11] 1956, Pacific Palisades, 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[12]
 Kuhns House, 1964, Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California
 Rice House, 1964, Richmond, Virginia
 VDL II Research House,[13][14][15] 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

Cyclorama Building, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Jardinette Apartments, Hollywood

 

Kaufmann House, Palm Springs, California.

Garden Grove Community Church, Garden Grove, CA

[edit] Publications by Neutra

(born April 8, 1892, Vienna, Austria — died April 16, 1970, Wuppertal, W.Ger.) Austrian-born U.S.
architect. Educated in Vienna and Zürich, Neutra moved to the U.S. in 1923. His most important
early work was the Lovell House, Los Angeles (1927 – 29), which features glass expanses and cable-
suspended balconies. Shortly after World War II, Neutra created his most memorable works: the
Kaufmann Desert House, Palm Springs, Calif. (1946 – 47), and the Tremaine House, Santa Barbara,
Calif. (1947 – 48). Elegant and precise, these houses are considered exceptionally fine examples of
the International Style, which Neutra helped introduce into the U.S. Carefully placed in the
landscape, Neutra's houses often have patios or porches that make the outdoors seem part of the
house. He believed that architecture should be a means of bringing man back into harmony with
nature and with himself and was particularly concerned that his houses reflect the way of life of the
owner. His later works included office buildings, churches, housing projects, and cultural centres. His
many writings include Survival Through Design (1954).

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/richard-neutra#ixzz1WjhcGKVs

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Richard Joseph Neutra

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Richard Joseph Neutra,  (born April 8, 1892, Vienna, Austria—died April 16,

1970, Wuppertal, W.Ger.), Austrian-born American architect known for his role in
introducing the International Style into American architecture.

Educated at the Technical Academy, Vienna, and the University of Zürich, Neutra, with the
German architect Erich Mendelsohn, won an award in 1923 for a city-planning project for
Haifa, Palestine (now in Israel). Neutra moved to the United States the same year, working
briefly for the firm of Holabird and Roche in Chicago and at Taliesin in Spring Green, Wis.,
with Frank Lloyd Wright.

Neutra’s most important early work ... (100 of 343 words)

 

Richard Neutra was born in Vienna in 1892, and emigrated to the US in 1929. The architecture of
Vienna left a sense of richness and elegance that was to emerge in his mature work, but in entirely
new forms. In southern California Neutra developed an especially appropriate regional architecture,
adding a new dimension and direction to the several regional design systems in that area. His motifs,
based on simple post and beam construction, were decidedly modern. In residential architecture, with
its range of design demands, his design philosophy came into its full range.

Neutra's house for Dr. P.M. Lovell, built in 1928, brought him international recognition. He called it the
Health House because, beyond having a differentiated outdoor play and recreation areas, the
structure is brought into a close relationship with the health factors of nature. Located on a
landscaped, steeply-terraced hill, it has views of the Pacific Ocean, the Santa Monica mountains, and
at night the city of Los Angeles illuminated in the foreground. Recently the house was featured in the
film LA Confidential.

From Neutra's many outstanding residences, two present themselves boldly in his adopted California:
the Desert House designed in 1946 for Edgar Kaufmann, set in the hot arid desert surrounding Palm
Springs, and two years later, the Tremaine House in the sweeping, tree-shaded, rock-strewn
meadowland of Montecito. Both have pinwheel plans with the living-dining area at the hub; wings of
one-room depth, designed to obtain natural light with views on at least two exposures, extend
outwards and open to terraces and patios that in turn merge into the rich garden landscape. They
respond quite lyrically to their natural surroundings, without ever compromising their architectonic
integrity.

Neutra believed that the architect should strive for a response to space and time that may be only
fleeting, yet in its intensity becomes truly memorable. Both houses have such: a chance reflection in
the pool, or glass in shadow; the roof hovering above the sunset, or the rustle of leaves.

   
Selected Architects: Gregory Ain | Stiles Clements | Charles Eames | A. Quincy Jones |
Raymond Kappe | Pierre Koenig | John Lautner | Clifford May | Richard Neutra | Rudolph
M. Schindler | Raphael Soriano | Frank Lloyd Wright | Lloyd Wright

Home | Introduction | Julius Shulman | Director's Message | Image Collection | Abstracts |

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Architect Richard Neutra

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Location Palm Springs, California   map

Date 1946   timeline

Building Type house

 Construction System and glass walls

Climate desert

Context suburban

Style California Modern

 Notes Flat roofs, opening onto paved
courtyard areas.

Images

Photo Photo

GreatBuildings Images

Google Images

More Images
Aerial view of Kaufmann Desert House

More images available on The GBC CD-ROM.   Contributions appreciated

Drawings

Plan Drawing

Discussion Kaufmann Desert House Commentary

"The Kaufmann house, Palm Springs, 1946, moved in the direction of the pavilion, w
last development in domestic architecture. Horizontal planes resting on horizontal pl
transparent walls. The material loses its importance—magnificent as the dry-joint sto
themselves—and the gist of the house is the weightless space enclosed. The victory o
is almost complete; it is reached by slow stages, like the Mexican house whose entra
leads through a garden to an unemphasized door."

— Esther McCoy. Richard Neutra. p16-17.

The Creator's Words

"As an architect, my life has been governed by the goal of building environmental ha
efficiency, and human enhancement into the experience of everyday living. These th
constituting the cause of architecture, and a life devoted to their realization cannot be

"I have been privileged, or perhaps doomed, to eschew simpler, lighter burdens. Sha
surroundings entails a lot more than spatial, structural, mechanical, and other technic
 —certainly a lot more than pontificating about matters of style. Our organic well-bei
on a wholesome, salubrious environment. Therefore exacting attention has to be paid
sensory world."

— Richard Neutra. from William Marlin, ed. Nature Near: late essays of Richard Ne
Resources GreatBuildings Resources

Amazon Books

Sources on Kaufmann Desert House

Francis D. K. Ching. Architecture: Form, Space, and Order. New York: Van Nostran
ISBN 0-442-21535-5. LC 79-18045. NA2760.C46. eye-level exterior perspective, p1
— A nice graphic introduction to architectural ideas. Updated 1996 edition available at Amazon.com

Thomas S.Hines. Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture. New York
University Press. 1982. Exterior photograph of rear facade, f250, p211. Exterior pho
facade, f284, p209.

John Julius Norwich, ed. Great Architecture of the World. London: Mitchell Beazley
small exterior photo, p255. Reprint edition: Da Capo Press, April 1991. ISBN 0-306
accessible, inspiring and informative overview of world architecture, with lots of full-color cutaway d
explanations. Available at Amazon.com

Dennis Sharp. Twentieth Century Architecture: a Visual History. New York: Facts o
ISBN 0-8160-2438-3. NA680.S517. exterior photo at dusk, plan drawing, p164. — A
Amazon.com

Kevin Matthews. The Great Buildings Collection on CD-ROM. Artifice, 2001. ISBN
— Available at Amazon.com

 Find books about Kaufmann Desert House

 
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Kaufmann Desert House

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kaufmann House, Palm Springs, CA

The Kaufmann House (a.k.a. Kaufmann Desert House) is a house located in Palm Springs,
California that was designed by architect Richard Neutra in 1946.

It was one of the last domestic projects conducted by Neutra, but it is also arguably one of his
most famous homes.

It is "one of the most important examples of International Style architecture in the United
States and the only one still in private hands", and was recently up for sale.[1]

Contents
[hide]

 1 Description
 2 History
 3 References
 4 External links
[edit] Description
This five-bedroom, five-bathroom vacation house in Palm Springs, California was designed
to emphasize connection to the desert landscape while offering shelter from harsh climatic
conditions. Large sliding glass walls open the living spaces and master bedroom to adjacent
patios. Major outdoor rooms are enclosed by a row of movable vertical fins that offer flexible
protection against sandstorms and intense heat.

A combined living and dining space, roughly square, lies at the center of the house. While the
house favors an east-west axis, four long perpendicular wings extend in each cardinal
direction from the living areas. Thoughtful placement of larger rooms at the end of each wing
helps define adjacent outdoor rooms, with circulation occurring both indoors and out.

The south wing connects to the public realm and includes a carport and two long covered
walkways. These walkways are separated by a massive stone wall and led to public and
service entries, respectively. The east wing of the house is connected to the living space by a
north-facing internal gallery and houses a master bedroom suite. To the west, a kitchen,
service spaces, and staff quarters are reached by a covered breezeway. In the northern wing,
another open walkway passes along an exterior patio, leading to two guest rooms.

[edit] History
The home was commissioned by Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., a Pittsburgh department store
tycoon as a desert retreat from harsh winters and built in 1946. It was made famous by the
1947 photos by Julius Shulman.[2] A decade earlier, Kaufmann commissioned Frank Lloyd
Wright to build Fallingwater in Pennsylvania.

After Kaufmann died in 1955, the house stood vacant for several years. It then had a series of
owners, including singer Barry Manilow and San Diego Chargers owner Eugene V. Klein,[3]
and had several renovations. These renovations enclosed a patio, added floral wallpaper to
the bedrooms and removed a wall for the addition of a media room; additionally the roof lines
were altered with the addition of air conditioning units. In 1992 the home was rediscovered
and purchased by a married couple: Brent Harris, an investment manager, and Beth Edwards
Harris, an architectural historian; at the time it had been for sale on the market three and a
half years.[2]

The Harrises purchased the home for US$1.5 million, then sought to restore the home to its
original design. Neutra died in 1970 and the original plans were not available, so the couple
brought in Los Angeles architects Leo Marmol and Ron Radziner[4] to restore the design. For
clues to the original design, the Harrises looked through the extensive Neutra archives at
UCLA, found additional documents through Columbia University and were able to work with
Shulman to access some of his never-printed photos of the home's interior. They were able to
obtain pieces from the original suppliers of paint and fixtures; and they purchased a metal-
crimping machine to reproduce the sheet-metal fascia that lined the roof.

Additionally, the Harrises were able to have a long-closed section of a Utah quarry re-opened
to mine matching stone to replace what had been removed or damaged. To help restore the
desert buffer Neutra had envisioned for the house, the Harrises also bought several adjoining
plots to more than double the land around the 3,200-square-foot (300 m2) house.
They rebuilt a pool house that serves as a viewing pavilion for the main house, and kept a
tennis court that was built on a parcel added to the original Kaufmann property.[2]

After the Harrises divorced, the home was supposedly sold on May 13, 2008 for US$15
million at auction by Christie's as a part of a high-profile sale of contemporary art.[3] The
house had a presale estimate of US$15 million to US$25 million.[2] The sale later fell through,
as the bidder breached terms of the purchase agreement.[5]

In October 2008, the house was listed for sale at US$12.95 million.[6]

The restoration by Marmol Radziner + Associates was critically lauded.[2] Today, many
critics place the Kaufmann House amongst the most important houses of the 20th century in
the United States, with the likes of Fallingwater, Robie House, Gropius House and the
Gamble House.[citation needed]

The Kaufmann house was included in a list of all time top 10 houses in Los Angeles, despite
its being in Palm Springs, in a Los Angeles Times survey of experts in December 2008.[7]

Lovell house

 Great Buildings  Search  Advanced  Buildings  Architects  Types  Places  3D Models  Pix  Archiplanet   A

Architect Richard Neutra

Location Los Angeles, California   map

Date 1928   timeline

Building Type house

tension cables, steel columns, sprayed

 Construction System
concrete w/ steel casement windows Subscribers - login to skip ads

Climate hot, dry

Context suburban

Style Modern

Notes "Health House"

Images GreatBuildings Images

  Google Images
 Aerial view of Lovell House

Available on The GBC CD-ROM.   Contributions appreciated

Drawings

Plan Drawing

Detail Drawing

3D Model 3D Massing Model (DesignWorkshop 3dmf)

Model Viewing Instructions

Discussion Lovell House Commentary

"The Lovell house... had in Los Angeles in 1929 an importance comparable to the ea
and glass exhibition buildings in Europe, and indeed it was through this house that L
archtiecture first became widely known in Europe. Brilliant as the structure was in co
doubtful whether it could have been executed without Neutra's familiartiy with the m
contractors and sub-contractors...

"The open-web skeleton, in which standard triple steel casements were integrated, w
sections and transported by truck to the steep hillside site, and the lightweight bar joi
ceilings were electrically welded in the shop. The shop work was held to a decimal t
the costliness of changes during assembly on the site, and as a result the skeleton wa
hours—too fast to photograph the various stages of construction.

The balconies, usually called cantilevered, are instead suspended by slender steel cab
frame. This use of members in suspension, and also the U-shaped reinforced thin con
which the pool was suspended, created a stir in architectural circles.

The walls of the house are of thin concrete, shop from two-hundred-foot-long hoses,
metal, which was backed by insulation panels as forms..."

— Esther McCoy. Richard Neutra. p13-14.

The Creator's Words

"This call for caution and responsibility is heard by voters and shareholders, and by j
critics, who are paying more attention than ever before to architectural, city-planning
environmental issues. They are inclined to pounce on any clear indication that a new
development, whether residential, commercial, or industrial, may jeopardize the heal
peace of mind of the people using it or living nearby. If it looks as though human vit
be weakened by some short-sighted building or plan, the resulting news and ensuing
get back to those to whom the client is accountable. This is no different than if some
bureaucrat had callously proposed digging one hole for both a septic tank and a well
hole is provably cheaper and faster than digging two."

— Richard Neutra. from William Marlin, ed. Nature Near: late essays of Richard Ne