During his fifty years long career the Austrian architect Richard Neutra become one of the masters of Mid-Century modern architecture. He was born in Vienna in 1892 and attended the Technische Hochschule -from 1911 to 1917- while the Architectural School of Adolf Loos at the same time.
During the first few years after the war he worked as a landscape gardener in Zurich. From 1921 he worked at the Municipal Construction Office in Luckenwalde, where he met Erich Mendelsohn. He moved to Berlin with Mendelsohn and became his assistant in his office there.
When in 1923 Nelson moved to California, he met and worked with some of the most important contemporary architects as Martin Roche, Frank Lloyd Wright and Rudolf Schindler; whom were later fundamental for the mid century modern movement. In 1926 Richard Neutra established his own office starting with the Jardinette Apartment House in Los Angeles (1926) made of concrete with window bands.
He also designed pre-fabricated houses,which he called \”One plus two\”, and worked on a project for a future city \”Rush City Reformed\”. ln 1927 he published his book We baut Amerika and was given the commission for the Lovell House in Los Angeles (1927-29). The steel skeleton which he designed for it could be erected in the short space of just 40 hours.
From 1931 to 1933 he built his own house, the Van der Leeuw Research House. ln the 1930s he experimented with new materials and constructions. Thus in 1935 he built a plywood model house, and also Josef von Sternberg\’s house in the San Fernando Valley in California, with its outer surfaces of metal and a pool of water surrounding it. lt has since been destroyed. Water was to remain an important design element in Neutra\’s buildings. During the Second World War when no modern materials were available, Neutra built the Nesbitt House in Los Angeles and the Channel Heights Estate in San Pedro (1942) using redwood, brick and glass. Significant achievements by Neutra in the 1940s are the Kaufmann House (desert house) in Palm Springs (1946-47), the Tremaine House in Santa Barbara (1947-48), and the Holiday House Motel in Malibu (1948).
From 1949 to 1959 he collaborated with Robert E. Alexander on larger public projects like churches, schools and shops: the elementary school on Kester Avenue in Los Angeles (1953), the Miramar Chapel in La Jolla (1957), and the building for the Ferro Chemical Company in Cleveland, Ohio (1957), with cantilevered roof and what became characteristic for Neutra, the thin supports. His ideas for an architecture with a human face Were Set forth in his book Survival through Design (1954).
Few architects as Richard Neutra influenced the Mid-Century modern architecture movement as him. To discover everything about him, check Mid Century Home now!
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