Neutra was born in Leopoldstadt, the second district of
Vienna,
Austria Hungary, on April 8, 1892, into a wealthy
Jewish family. His Jewish-Hungarian father Samuel Neutra (1844–1920),[4][5] was a proprietor of a metal foundry, and his mother, Elizabeth "Betty" Glaser[6] Neutra (1851–1905) was a member of the
IKG Wien. Richard had two brothers, who also emigrated to the United States, and a sister,
Josephine Theresia "Pepi" Weixlgärtner, an artist who married the Austrian art historian
Arpad Weixlgärtner and who later emigrated to Sweden. Her work can be seen at the Modern Art Museum in Stockholm.[7]
In June 1914, Neutra's studies were interrupted when he was ordered to
Trebinje, where he served as an lieutenant in the artillery until the end of World War I. Dione Neutra recalled her husband Richard's hatred of the retribution against the
Serbs in an interview conducted in 1978 after his death: "He talked about the people he met [i.e. in Trebinje] … how his commander was a sadist, who was able to play out his sadistic tendencies…. He was just a small town clerk in Vienna, but then he became his commander."[8]
Neutra took a leave in 1917 to return to the Technische Hochschule to take his final examinations.[9]
After World War I, Neutra moved 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 center for Haifa, Palestine (1922), and to the Zehlendorf housing project in Berlin (1923).[10] He married Dione Niedermann, the daughter of an architect, in 1922. They had three sons, Frank L (1924–2008),
Dion (1926–2019), who became an architect and his father's partner, and
Raymond Richard Neutra (1939–), a physician and environmental epidemiologist.
Richard Neutra moved to the United States by 1923 and became a
naturalized citizen in 1929. He worked briefly for
Frank Lloyd Wright before accepting an invitation from
Rudolf Schindler, a close friend from his university days, to work and live communally in Schindler's
Kings Road House in California. Neutra's first works in California were both in the realm of landscape architecture: namely, the grounds of the
Lovell Beach House (1922–25), in Newport Beach, which Schindler had designed for
Philip Lovell; and a pergola and wading pool for the complex that Wright and Schindler had designed for
Aline Barnsdall on Olive Hill (1925), in Hollywood. Schindler and Neutra would go on to collaborate on an entry for the
League of Nations Competition (1926–27); in the same year, they formed a firm with the planner
Carol Aronovici (1881–1957), called the Architectural Group for Industry and Commerce (AGIC). Neuatra subsequently developed his own practice and went on to design numerous buildings embodying the International Style, 12 of which are designated as Historic Cultural Monuments (HCM), including the
Lovell Health House (HCM #123; 1929), for the same client as the Lovell Beach House, and the Richard and Dion Neutra
VDL Research House (HCM #640; 1966).[10] In California, he became celebrated for rigorously geometric but airy structures that epitomized a West Coast version of
mid-century modern residential design. His clients included
Edgar J. Kaufmann, (who had commissioned Wright to design
Fallingwater, in Pennsylvania),
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, he tried to move to the Soviet Union, to help design workers' housing that could be easily constructed, as a means of helping with the housing shortage.[11]
In 1932, Neutra was included in the seminal
MoMA exhibition on modern architecture, curated by
Philip Johnson and
Henry-Russell Hitchcock. From 1943 to 1944, Neutra served as a visiting professor of design at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont. 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.[10] 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
Gerd Bucerius, publisher of Die Zeit, as well as figures from commerce and science. His work was also part of the
architecture event in the
art competition at the
1932 Summer Olympics.[12]
Richard Joseph Neutra died on April 16, 1970, at the age of 78.[13]
Architectural style
He was known 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.[citation needed]
In a 1947 article for the Los Angeles Times, "The Changing House," Neutra emphasizes the "ready-for-anything" plan – stressing an open, multifunctional plan for living spaces that are flexible, adaptable and easily modified for any type of life or event.[14]
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.[citation needed]
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.[citation needed]
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.[citation needed]
Neutra's 14,000 sqf "Windshield" house built on Fishers Island, NY for
John Nicholas Brown II burned down on New Year's Eve 1973 and was not rebuilt.[20]
Corona Avenue Elementary School, 1935, 3835 Bell Avenue,
Bell, California
Largent House, 1935, 49 Hopkins Avenue at the corner of Burnett Avenue, San Francisco. Building was demolished by new owners and as of 2018[update], they have been ordered to rebuild an exact replica.[27][28]
1927: Wie Baut Amerika? (How America Builds) (Julius Hoffman)
1930: Amerika: Die Stilbildung des neuen Bauens in den Vereinigten Staaten (Anton Schroll Verlag). New Ways of Building in the World [series], vol. 2. Edited by
El Lissitzky.
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: Mystery 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)
References
^Dorsey, Michael (2012). The Oyler House: Richard Neutra's Desert Retreat (Motion picture). First Run Features.
^Esther McCoy.(1974).Letters between R. M. Schindler and Richard Neutra, 1914-1924.Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 33, No. 3 (October 1974), pp.219–224
^
abNeutra, Dion (2012). "The Neutras Then & Later(Photography by Julius Shulman". I (I). Triton: Barcelona, Los Angeles. {{
cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (
help)
^"Cal Poly Pomona Given Neutra Research House". Los Angeles Times. March 2, 1980.
^"Architect's Home Given To Cal Poly". Los Angeles Times. May 18, 1980.
McCoy, Esther (1960). Five California Architects. Reinhold Publishing.
ISBN0-275-71720-8.
reprinted in 1975 by Praeger
Hines, Thomas (1982). Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture. Oxford University Press.
ISBN0-19-503028-1.
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.
JSTOR3171369.
Lamprecht, Barbara (2000). Richard Neutra: Complete Works. Taschen. p. 360.
ISBN978-3822866221.
Lamprecht, Barbara (2004). Richard Neutra, 1892–1970: Survival through Design. Taschen.
ISBN3-8228-2773-8.
Lavin, Sylvia (2005). Form Follows Libido: Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture. MIT Press.
ISBN0-262-12268-5.