Richard Neutra

• Born: April 8, 1892
• Birthplace: Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Austria)
• Died: April 16, 1970
• Place of death: Wuppertal, West Germany (now in Germany)

Austrian-born architect

Neutra combined European and American ideas of modern architecture with his theories of urban planning to become one of the twentieth century’s most significant modernist residence designers.

Area of achievement: Architecture and design

Early Life

Richard Neutra (NOY-trah) was one of four children born to Samuel Neutra, a metallurgist, and Elizabeth Glazer Neutra. As a young man, Richard Neutra was impressed with the steel-framed train stations designed by Otto Wagner, a Secessionist architect. The Secessionists strove to create “modern” buildings using geometric forms and the latest industrial materials. Neutra was also influenced by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who was similarly devising a modernist style, and industrialist Henry Ford, who initiated the assembly-line system in his automobile factories. Neutra believed that buildings, like Ford’s cars, could be constructed of prefabricated parts.

In 1911, Neutra entered the Technishe Hochshule in Vienna, where he studied mechanical engineering, design, and other subjects related to architecture. One of his teachers was the architect Adolf Loos, a proponent of Wright and other American architects and another influence on Neutra. Neutra’s schooling was interrupted in 1914, when he was drafted into the Austrian army, and he served on the Balkan front during World War I. In 1917, he returned to Vienna to resume his education and graduated the following year.

Life’s Work

After graduation, Neutra briefly worked for architectural firms in Switzerland and Berlin and was the city architect in Luckenwalde, Germany. In October, 1921, he became a draftsman for Erich Mendelsohn, a leading German architect during the Weimar Republic. In 1922, Neutra married Dione Niedermann, and the couple had three sons, Frank, Dion, and Raymond. Frank was later discovered to be mentally challenged and placed in an institution; Dion became an architect; and Raymond became a physician.

In the 1920’s, Neutra wanted to go to the United States, where his friend, Austrian-born architect Rudolph Schindler, was working for Wright. In October, 1923, Neutra briefly settled in New York before moving to Chicago to work for Holabird and Roche, one of the firms that pioneered development of the skyscraper in the nineteenth century. In Chicago, Neutra helped design the Palmer House hotel and met Wright, who invited Neutra to Taliesen, Wright’s home and studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Neutra and his family spent a few months at Taliesen, where he drew plans and conducted design studies for several of Wright’s projects.

In February, 1925, the Neutras arrived in Los Angeles, which would be their permanent home and the location of Neutra’s most significant buildings. The family initially lived with Schindler and his wife, and Neutra worked with Schindler and other architects. At this time, Neutra expressed his vision of modern architecture in his plans for his imaginary metropolis, Rush City. Rush City featured freeway and railway systems traveling through high-rise buildings and one- and two-story housing projects. The city also had drive-in markets, community centers, and schools in which a circle of classrooms opened onto outside patios. The architecture of Rush City was impersonal, austere, and geometric, and its buildings were mass-produced out of prefabricated parts constructed of steel, concrete, and glass.

Neutra’s design concepts were evident in two projects commissioned in the late 1920’s. The Jardinette Apartments in Hollywood, completed in 1927, is a housing complex constructed of concrete that features gardens on its flat roofs, bands of steel-casement windows, and projecting balconies. Neutra’s acknowledged masterpiece, the Lovell Health House in the Hollywood Hills, was completed in 1928. The two-and-a-half-story residence is cut into the hillside. The home was the first completely steel-framed residence in the United States, and it was constructed of prefabricated elements, including panels of casement windows that were clamped into place and concrete Gunite that was “shot” onto a wire mesh frame.

In these projects, Neutra exhibited the elements that would become his personal architectural vocabulary: bands of steel-casement windows; flat and often overhanging roofs; sliding glass doors or large casement windows to connect the indoor living spaces to outdoor gardens and patios; the use of metal, wood, glass, and concrete; and built-in furniture.

For the rest of his career, Neutra would design many other residences, including his own home in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was particularly interested in designing small, low-cost homes, although many of his clients were wealthy people who worked for the Los Angeles film studios. He also created apartment houses and commercial structures, such as office buildings, restaurants, and schools. The Corona Elementary School, completed in 1935, featured sliding glass doors opening onto outdoor patios, outdoor hallways, and movable desks and chairs that enabled instruction to be offered both indoors and outdoors. During World War II, he designed several housing projects, including Avion Village, a complex for defense workers in Grand Prairie, Texas, and Channel Heights, for shipyard workers in San Pedro, California.

Neutra’s office was a training ground for many architects who would later design significant buildings in Southern California, including Harwell H. Harris, Gregory Ain, and Raphael S. Soriano. In 1949, Neutra teamed with architect Robert E. Alexander, with whom he designed schools, hospitals, and health centers in Puerto Rico and schools and the governor’s house in Guam. Three of their most distinguished collaborations were the Lincoln Memorial Museum and Visitors’ Center at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; the U.S. Embassy in Karachi, Pakistan; and the Los Angeles County Hall of Records.

In 1949, Neutra suffered a major heart attack, and he would be plagued with heart trouble and bouts of depression for the rest of his life. After being struck by a second heart attack in 1953, he performed much of his work in bed, and, wearing pajamas and a necktie, he often received clients in his bedroom. In the late 1950’s, he ended his partnership with Alexander, who opened an architectural office with Neutra’s son, Dion.

By the late 1950’s and 1960’s, the aesthetics of modernism and the International Style that Neutra had helped promote had fallen out of fashion, and critics denounced the impersonal, industrialized quality of his buildings. Neutra continued to obtain commissions throughout the United States, as well as in Cuba, Venezuela, Germany, France, and Switzerland. He began to alter his style of residential architecture to include pitched instead of flat roofs and the use of wood and brick instead of concrete.

In 1963, Neutra’s home and studio were gutted in a fire, and he lost almost all of his work and personal possessions. He and Dion redesigned and rebuilt the home. In 1966, Neutra and his wife moved to Vienna, returning to Los Angeles in 1969. On April 16, 1970, Neutra was visiting a client in Wuppertal, West Germany, when he suffered a massive heart attack and died.

Significance

After several decades of criticism about his work, architectural historians and critics reevaluated Neutra’s architectural legacy in the late twentieth century, praising his ability to bridge European and American architecture, his use of new industrial materials, and the purity and geometric beauty of his style. He succeeded in his mission to create a new, modernist architecture, as demonstrated by the Lovell Health House and the many other residences that best express his design philosophy.

Bibliography

Gehbard, David, and Robert Winter. An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles. Rev. ed. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 2003. A survey of the city’s architecture, featuring information about where and when Neutra’s buildings were constructed and descriptions of his work and architectural style.

Hines, Thomas S. Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture. Rev. ed. New York: Rizzoli, 2005. An indispensable source, offering a comprehensive account of Neutra’s life, work, and architectural concepts. Includes a list of his buildings and many photographs of his work.

Lamprecht, Barbara, and Peter Gössel. Neutra. 25th anniversary ed. Los Angeles: Taschen, 2009. A brief, illustrated overview of Neutra’s work.