Richard Joseph Neutra

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Neutra

Richard Joseph Neutra (April 8, 1892 – April 16, 1970) was an Austrian American architect. Living and building for the majority of his career in Southern California, he came to be considered among the most important modernist architects. Contents [show] Biography [edit]

Neutra was born in Leopoldstadt, the 2nd district of Vienna, Austria Hungary, on April 8, 1892 into a wealthy Jewish family. His Jewish-Hungarian father Samuel Neutra (1844 – 1920)[1] was a proprietor of a metal foundry, and his mother, Elizabeth "Betty" Glaser[2] Neutra (1851 – 1905) was a member of the IKG Wien. Richard had two brothers who also emigrated to the United States, 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). After World War I Neutra went to Switzerland where he worked with the landscape architect Gustav Ammann. In 1921 he served briefly as city architect in the German town of Luckenwalde, and later in the same year he joined the office of Erich Mendelsohn in Berlin. Neutra contributed to the firm’s competition entry for a new commercial centre for Haifa, Palestine (1922), and to the Zehlendorf housing project in Berlin (1923).[3] He married Dione Niedermann, the daughter of an architect, in 1922. Neutra 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. Neutra’s first work in Los Angeles was in landscape architecture, where he provided the design for the garden of Schindler’s beach house (1922–5), designed for Philip Lovell, Newport Beach, and for a pergola and wading pool for Wright and Schindler’s complex for Aline Barnsdall on Olive Hill (1925), Hollywood. Schindler and Neutra collaborated on an entry for the League of Nations Competition of 1926–7; in the same year they formed a firm with the planner Carol Aronovici (1881–1957) called the Architectural Group for Industry and Commerce (AGIC). He subsequently developed his own practice and went on to design numerous buildings embodying the International Style, twelve of which are designated as Historic Cultural Monuments (HCM), including the Lovell Heath House (HCM #123; 1929) and the Richard and Dion Neutra VDL Research House (HCM #640; 1966).[3] In California, he became celebrated for rigorously geometric but airy structures that symbolized a West Coast variation on the mid-century modern residence. Clients included Edgar J. Kaufmann, Galka Scheyer, and Walter Conrad Arensberg. 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. In 1932, Neutra was included in the seminal MoMA exhibition on modern architecture, curated by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock. In 1949 Neutra formed a partnership with Robert E. Alexander that lasted until 1958, which finally gave him the opportunity to design larger commercial and institutional buildings. In 1955, the United States Department of State commissioned Neutra to design a new embassy in Karachi. Neutra's appointment was part of an ambitious program of architectural commissions to renowned architects, which included embassies by Walter Gropius in Athens, Edward Durrell Stone in New Delhi, Marcel Breuer in The Hague, Josep Lluis Sert in Baghdad, and Eero Saarinen in London. In 1965 Neutra formed a partnership with his son Dion Neutra.[3] Between 1960 and 1970, Neutra created eight villas in Europe, four in Switzerland, three in Germany and one in France. Prominent clients in this period included publisher of the ZEIT newspaper Gerd Bucerius but also figures from commerce and science. Neutra died in Wuppertal, Germany, on April 16, 1970, at the age of 78. Architectural style [edit]

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'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 [edit]

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 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.[4][5] In 2011, the Neutra-designed Kronish House (1954) on 9439 Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills sold for $12.8 million.[6] In 2009, the exhibition "Richard Neutra, Architect: Sketches and Drawings" at the Los Angeles Central Library featured a selection of Neutra's travel sketches, figure drawings and building renderings. An exhibition on the architect's work in Europe between 1960 and 1979 was mounted by the MARTa Herford, Germany. The revival in the late 1990s 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 Kaufmann Desert House was restored by Marmol Radziner + Associates in the mid-1990s. The typeface family Neutraface, designed by Christian Schwartz for House Industries, was based on Richard Neutra's architecture and design principles. In 1977 he was posthumously awarded the AIA Gold Medal. Lost Works [edit]

One of the most famous and most photographed Neutra-designed structures was the 1962 Maslon House of Rancho Mirage California, which was infamously demolished in 2002.[7] Neutra's famed Gettysburg Cyclorama building demolished by National Parks Service, March 8–9, 2013.[8] Selected works [edit]

See also: Category: Richard Neutra buildings

Miller House, Palm Springs Jardinette Apartments, 1928, Hollywood, California Lovell House, 1929, Los Angeles, California Mosk House, 1933, 2742 Hollyridge Drive, Hollywood Nathan and Malve Koblick House, 1933, 98 Fairview Avenue, Atherton, California Universal-International Building (Laemmle Building), 1933, Hollywood Scheyer House, 1934, Blue Heights Drive, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles William and Melba Beard House (with Gregory Ain), 1935, 1981 Meadowbrook, Altadena California Military Academy, 1935, Culver City Corona Avenue Elementary School, 1935, 3835 Bell Avenue, Bell, California Largent House, 1935, corner of Hopkins and Burnett Avenues, San Francisco 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 Sten and Frenke House (Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #647), 1934, 126 Mabery Road, Santa Monica The Neutra House Project, 1935, Restoration of the Neutra "Orchard House" in Los Altos, California Josef Kun House, 1936, 7960 Fareholm Drive, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California Landfair Apartments, 1937, Westwood, Los Angeles, California Strathmore Apartments, 1937, Westwood, Los Angeles, California Aquino Duplex, 1937, 2430 Leavenworth Street, San Francisco Leon Barsha House (with P. Pfisterer), 1937, 302 Mesa Road, Pacific Palisades, California Miller House,[9] 1937, Palm Springs, California Windshield House,[10] 1938, Fisher's Island, New York Lewin House, 1938, 512 Ocean Front Walk, Santa Monica, Los Angeles Emerson Junior High School, 1938, 1650 Selby Avenue, West Los Angeles, California Ward-Berger House, 1939, 3156 North Lake Hollywood Drive, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California Kelton Apartments, Westwood, Los Angeles Beckstrand House, 1940, 1400 Via Montemar, Palos Verdes Estates, Los Angeles Bonnet House, 1941, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California Van Cleef Residence, 1942, 651 Warner Ave, Westwood, Los Angeles Channel Heights Housing Projects, 1942, San Pedro, California John Nesbitt House, 1942, 414 Avondale, Brentwood, Los Angeles Kaufmann Desert House,[11][12][13] 1946, Palm Springs, California Bailey House, 1946, Santa Monica, California Case Study Houses #6 and #13 Schmidt House, 1948, 1460 Chamberlain Road, Linda Vista, Pasadena, California Joseph Tuta House, 1948, 1800 Via Visalia, Palos Verdes, California Holiday House Motel, 1948, 27400 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, California Elkay Apartments, 1948, 638-642 Kelton Avenue, Westwood, Los Angeles Gordon Wilkins House, 1949, 528 South Hermosa Place, South Pasadena, California[14][15] Hines House, 1949, 760 Via Somonte, Palos Verdes, California Atwell House, 1950, 1411 Atwell Road, El Cerrito, California Nick Helburn House, 1950, Sourdough Road, 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, 1540 Poppypeak Drive, Pasadena, California Schaarman House, 1953, 7850 Torreyson Drive, Hollywood Hills Kester Avenue Elementary School (with R. E. Alexander), 1953, 5353 Kester Avenue, Los Angeles Sidney R. Troxell House,[16] 1956, 766 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades, California Kronish House, 1955, Beverly Hills, California[17] Clark House, 1957, Pasadena, California Airman's Memorial Chapel, 1957, 45549 Bauer Street, Miramar, California Ferro Chemical Company Building, 1957, Cleveland, Ohio Mellon Hall and Francis Scott Key Auditorium, 1958, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland Riviera United Methodist Church, 1958, 375 Palos Verdes Boulevard, Redondo Beach Singleton House, 1959, 15000 Mulholland Drive, Hollywood Hills 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 Julian Bond House, 1960, 4449 Yerba Santa, San Diego, California R.J. Neutra Elementary School, 1960, Naval Air Station Lemoore, in Lemoore, California (designed in 1929) Palos Verdes High School, 1961, 600 Cloyden Road, Palos Verdes, California Haus Rang, 1961, Königstein im Taunus, Germany Hans Grelling House/Casa Tuia on Monte Verità, 1961, Strada del Roccolo 11, Ascona, Tessin, Switzerland Los Angeles County Hall of Records, 1962, Los Angeles, California. Gettysburg Cyclorama, 1962, Gettysburg National Military Park, Pennsylvania Gonzales Gorrondona House, 1962, Caracas Venezuela Bewobau Residences, 1963, Quickborn near Hamburg, Germany 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[18] Swirbul Library, 1963, Adelphi University, Garden City, New York Kuhns House, 1964, Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California Rice House (National Register of Historic Places), 1964, 1000 Old Locke Lane, Richmond, Virginia VDL II Research House,[19][20][21] 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 Haus Kemper, 1965, Wuppertal, Germany Sports and Congress Center, 1965, Reno, Nevada Delcourt House, 1968–69, Croix, Nord, France Haus Pescher, 1969, Wuppertal, Germany Haus Jürgen Tillmanns, 1970, Stettfurt, Thurgau, Switzerland

Cyclorama Building, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Jardinette Apartments, Hollywood

Kaufmann House, Palm Springs, California.

Garden Grove Community Church, Garden Grove, CA

Publications by Neutra [edit]

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)