Richard Neutra

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Richard Joseph Neutra (born April 8, 1892 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; † April 16, 1970 in Wuppertal ) was an Austrian architect who mainly worked in southern California. In the USA in particular, he is an important representative of “classical modernism” in architecture.

Life

Youth in Europe

Richard Neutra was born into a wealthy Jewish family. His father Samuel Neutra (1844–1920) owned a metal foundry, his mother was Elisabeth b. Glazer (1851-1905). Around 1900 the family lived in Vienna 2., Taborstrasse 72, not far from the north-west train station . Richard had two brothers (who also emigrated to the USA) and as a sister the sculptor Pepi (Josephine) who was married to the art historian Arpád Weixlgärtner and who survived the German persecution of Jews in Vienna.

Neutra attended the Sophiengymnasium in Vienna 2., Zirkusgasse 46–48, until 1910, and studied at the Technical University of Vienna from 1910–1918 , where he was a student of Max Fabiani and Karl Mayreder . Hugo Salinger provided him with a recognized engineering education. In 1912 he also attended Adolf Loos' construction school . Neutra was also influenced by Otto Wagner , Austria-Hungary's leading architect, without having been his student. In 1912 he went on a study trip to Italy and the Balkans with Ernst Ludwig Freud , son of Sigmund Freud .

The First World War interrupted Neutra's studies. He was used as a lieutenant in the reserve in the artillery and fell ill with malaria and tuberculosis . In 1918 he was dismissed from the kuk military service as an artillery lieutenant. He was therefore only able to complete his studies in the summer of 1918 with the title "dipl.ing.summa cum laude". In 1919 he went to Switzerland for a cure. At the same time he learned garden architecture from Gustav Ammann in Zurich, with whom he remained a lifelong friend, and attended Karl Moser's design seminar at the ETH Zurich .

In 1920 Ernst Freud found him a job in a Berlin architecture firm. In 1921 he was accepted into the municipal building department of the small town of Luckenwalde , 50 km south of Berlin . In the municipal building authority of Luckenwalde he designed a forest cemetery as his first project. Neutra was Erich Mendelsohn's assistant in Berlin from 1921 to 1923 . In 1923, the design by Mendelsohn and Neutra won first prize in the architectural competition for a business center in Haifa (not realized).

In Zurich he met the ten years younger Swiss singer and cellist Dione Niedermann (1902–1990), daughter of an architect; the wedding of the two took place on December 23, 1922.

Moved to the USA

Adolf Loos had interested Neutra in modern US architecture, in particular the buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright . Neutra therefore decided in 1923 to move to the USA together with his wife Dione . After positions in New York , he got a job in 1924 in the leading architecture firm of Holabird & Roche in Chicago, which was already dominated by skyscrapers .

At the funeral of Louis Sullivan , he met with Frank Lloyd Wright, the couple Neutra to his Taliesin ( Wisconsin invited). The two were able to stay there for several months. In Taliesin, Neutra's design for the competition to build the Hietzinger Synagogue in Vienna was created, in which he was honored with recognition. Also in 1924 his first son, Frank Lloyd, was born.

In 1925, the couple moved, impressed by an advertising poster with the words California Calls You! , to Los Angeles . There he met his fellow Viennese student Rudolph Schindler , who had moved to the United States in 1914. He became an employee in his architecture office. Schindler and Neutra participated unsuccessfully in the competition for the design of the Palace of the League of Nations in Geneva .

Since moving to California, Neutra has been considered a representative of the modern international style in the United States in the retrospective of architectural history . In 1926 he received an architect license. His second son Dion was born. In 1929 Richard Neutra became a US citizen. His youngest son Raymond was born in 1939.

Neutra's style

In 1926 Neutra received his first major order (apartment houses). In 1927 he published his book "How does America build?" In the Hollywood Hills from 1927 to 1929 he built the Lovell House for the reform doctor Philip M. Lovell in a steel structure made of prefabricated parts, which was still very rare at the time. His former partner Schindler had designed the Lovell Beach House from 1925 to 1926 and was responsible for the garden design together with Neutra.

In the house Lovell Neutra realized his architectural ideas. The house had large expanses of glass, and like Wright's buildings, the interior and exterior blended into one another. However, this assignment resulted in the separation from Rudolph Schindler, because the five-year-old older man couldn't get over the fact that Neutra, whom he sponsored, carried out this assignment on his own from a joint client. The house made Neutra internationally known in professional circles, motivated him to go on a lecture tour through Europe (he visited Sigmund Freud in Vienna in 1930 ) and was presented in an exhibition of contemporary architecture in the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1932 .

In the same year Neutra received the invitation from Josef Frank to help build the Werkbundsiedlung in Vienna , and he accepted. His design for a single-storey residential building was erected at the 13th district, Woinovichgasse 9, between Jagdschlossgasse and Veitingergasse; Neutra was not present at the final inspection of the house.

Neutra now primarily built villas and private houses, which were characterized by their generosity and harmonious integration into nature. Other buildings from the 1930s are: the Channel Heights Housing Project in San Pedro , Neutra's own house in 1932 and Emerson Jr. High School in West Los Angeles in 1938. Neutra also wanted to build and show the house of the writer Thomas Mann , who had emigrated to the USA some of the buildings he had planned for him, but was unable to assert himself because Mann Neutra's architectural ideas and his designs did not suit him.

In his designs, Neutra developed the modern, Californian style . He combined light metal constructions with stucco elements to create a bright ensemble that was permeable to light and air. He specialized in embedding architecture in carefully arranged gardens and landscapes, as well as his own house. He was primarily inspired by the contrast between geometric shapes and nature. This is particularly evident in the photos by photographer Julius Shulman . Neutra's architectural ideas were largely based on the wishes of his customers. Unlike many other architects , he did not want to impose his own ideas on the clients. He was known for submitting comprehensive questionnaires to his clients in order to be able to consider as many special requests as possible. One of Neutra's most famous buildings was the 1946 Kaufmann Desert House designed for Edgar J. Kaufmann , which was built in a lonely landscape near Palm Springs , California .

Neutra once summed up his architectural philosophy as follows:

“Put people in connection with nature; that's where he developed and that's where he feels particularly at home. "

He called his theory "biorealistic architecture". Neutra emphatically differentiated himself from dogmatic functionalism.

Cooperations

In 1948 Neutra again undertook a lecture tour through Europe. From 1949 to 1964 (according to another source until 1959) the office shared with the architect Robert E. Alexander. In 1952 Neutra built the Moore House in Ojai with a reflective pool that "creates the illusion that the house is floating on a water garden" (Richard's son Dion). Dion became Richard's partner in the 1960s. In 1961 the Palos Verdes High School was built and in the same year the Fine Arts Building of Columbia State University in Northridge, which was so badly damaged in an earthquake in 1994 that it had to be demolished.

In 1962 Neutra founded three institutions: the Richard J. Neutra Foundation in Los Angeles, the Richard J. Neutra Institute in Zurich and the Richard J. Neutra Society in Vienna.

In 1962 he completed the Los Angeles Hall of Records , in 1964 the Kuhns House in Woodland Hills, and in 1965 the Bucerius and Rentsch villas in Switzerland. In his last years he worked in France . He also designed school buildings, churches, commercial buildings and museums in various countries in cooperation with Alexander. On later villa buildings in Switzerland in the 1960s, he worked with the Zurich garden architect Ernst Cramer , also a student of Gustav Ammann. The designs from the late 1960s were created in collaboration with his son Dion Neutra.

Almost all of Richard Neutra's work between 1940 and 1967 was published in the journal Arts & Architecture by John Entenza .

Treetops House , designed by Richard and Dion Neutra, completed by Dion Neutra in 1980

Retirement

Richard Neutra lived in Vienna from 1966 to 1969 (the studio in Los Angeles, now called Richard & Dion Neutra , was already headed by his son and heir). The Neutra couple never made a secret of the fact that they would have liked to stay in Vienna, but that was not possible due to a lack of orders. In addition, Neutra was rejected by the domestic architecture scene and viewed as a representative of the establishment. His wish to be able to design projects here remained unfulfilled. The house in the Werkbundsiedlung remained Neutra's only building in Vienna. Richard Neutra died of heart failure in 1970 on a lecture tour in Europe while visiting the Kemper House in Wuppertal, which he designed. His urn is buried in Los Angeles. His son continued the architectural work at his father's place of work. In the 1990s, the style that was shaped by this experienced a renaissance.

Awards and recognitions

Neutra was awarded a doctorate in 1950 by the University of Graz . In 1958 he received the City of Vienna Prize for Architecture , and in 1959 the Federal Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany . Since 1961 he has been an honorary member of the Secession artists' association in Vienna. Neutra was elected an Associate Member ( ANA ) by the National Academy of Design in New York in 1964 . In the same year he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters . In 1967 he received the Ring of Honor of the City of Vienna . In 1969 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of California Los Angeles.

Richard Neutra was also an honorary member of professional associations such as the Royal Institute of British Architects . The frequently found statement that he was an honorary citizen of the City of Vienna does not correspond to the facts.

Richard-Neutra-Gasse in Vienna's Leopoldau district has been named after him since 1974 . A font family bears his name.

buildings

Jardinette Apartments, Los Angeles (1927–1929)
Lovell House, Hollywood Hills (1927-1929)
Miller House, Palm Springs (1937)
Garden Grove Community Church (1962)
House Marienhöhe 83, Bewobau-Siedlung Quickborn (1962–1963)
  • 1921–1922: Forest cemetery in Luckenwalde
  • 1923–1924: Four single-family houses in Berlin-Zehlendorf, Onkel-Tom-Strasse 85, 87, 89 and 91
  • 1927–1929: Lovell Physical Culture Center in Los Angeles
  • 1927–1929: Jardinette Apartments in Los Angeles
  • 1927–1929: Health House (Lovell House) in Los Angeles
  • 1932: House No. 47 in the Werkbundsiedlung Vienna , 13., Woinovichgasse 9
  • 1932: Van der Leeuw Research House or Neutra House (Neutra's own house) in Los Angeles (rebuilt in 1964 after fire in 1963)
  • 1933: Mosk in Hollywood
  • 1933: Nathan Koblick House in Atherton
  • 1933: Universal-International Building ( Laemmle Building) in Hollywood
  • 1934: Scheyer House (for Galka Scheyer ) in Los Angeles
  • 1934: Sten and Frenke House in Santa Monica
  • 1934/1935 (or until 1937): Josef von Sternberg's house in Northridge, San Fernando Valley , Los Angeles (destroyed)
  • 1935: Beard House in Altadena
  • 1935: California Military Academy in Culver City
  • 1935: Corona School in Bell
  • 1935: Largent House in San Francisco (destroyed in 2018, rebuilding planned)
  • 1936: House Douglas Plywood Co. in Westwood (Los Angeles)
  • 1936: House Kun No. 1 in Los Angeles
  • 1936: Richter House in Pasadena, California
  • 1937: Harry Koblick House in Los Angeles
  • 1937: Kraigher House in Brownsville, Texas
  • 1937: Landfair Apartments in Westwood, Los Angeles
  • 1937: Strathmore Apartments in Westwood, Los Angeles
  • 1937: House Mensendieck (Miller House) in Palm Springs (California)
  • 1937: Aquino Duplex in San Francisco
  • 1937: House Leon Barsha in North Hollywood, California
  • 1938: Emerson Jr. High School in West Los Angeles
  • 1938: House John Nicholas Brown on Fisher's Island, New Jersey
  • 1942: Channel Heights Housing Projects in San Pedro, California
  • 1942: Nesbitt House in Los Angeles
  • 1946/1947: Desert House for Edgar Kaufmann in Palm Springs (California)
  • 1948: Holiday House Motel in Malibu , California
  • 1948: Case Study House # 20A in Pacific Palisades , California
  • 1948: Warren Tremaine House in Montecito near Santa Barbara , California
  • 1949: Dion Neutra House (Reunion House) in Los Angeles
  • 1950: Neutra Office Building in Los Angeles
  • 1950: Atwell House in Los Angeles
  • 1952: Moore House in Ojai, California
  • 1953: Elementary School , Kester Avenue, Los Angeles; with RE Alexander
  • 1950–1954: Eagle Rock Club House in Los Angeles
  • 1957: Airman's Memorial Chapel in Miramar, La Jolla near San Diego , California; with RE Alexander
  • 1957: Ferro Chemical Company Building in Cleveland , Ohio
  • 1958: Rivera Methodist Church in Redondo Beach , California
  • 1959: US Embassy in Karachi , Pakistan , with RE Alexander
  • 1959/1960: Singleton House in Los Angeles
  • 1960: Atrium housing estate, Starnberg with Hans Peter Buddeberg
  • 1961: Palos Verdes High School , Palos Verdes, California
  • 1961: House Rang in Koenigstein im Taunus , Germany
  • 1961: Casa Tuia in Ascona , Ticino , Switzerland
  • 1961: Fine Arts Building at Columbia State University in Northridge (demolished after earthquake damage in 1994)
  • 1962: Los Angeles Hall of Records
  • 1962: Community Church (drive-in church) in Garden Grove near Los Angeles
  • 1962: Maslon House (photographed by Shulman; demolished)
  • 1962: Gonzalez Gorrondona House , Caracas, Venezuela
  • 1963: Lincoln Memorial Museum in Gettysburg , Pennsylvania (Dion Neutra fights impending demolition in spring 2010)
  • 1963: Children's Psychiatric Hospital in Los Angeles
  • 1963: Bewobau settlement in Quickborn near Hamburg , Germany
  • 1960 or 1964: RJ Neutra Elementary School on Naval Air Station in Lemoore , California (designed 1929)
  • 1964: Kuhn's House in Woodland Hills, California
  • 1960–1964: Bewobau settlement (garden city) in Mörfelden-Walldorf , Hesse, Germany
  • 1963–1965: Rentsch House in Wengen , Bernese Oberland, Switzerland, 1965; Garden architect: Ernst Cramer
  • 1965: House Bucerius in Brione sopra Minusio on Lake Maggiore , Ticino, Switzerland, 1965; Garden architect: Ernst Cramer
  • 1965: House Kemper in Wuppertal , Germany
  • 1965: Sports and Convention Hall in Reno , Nevada
  • 1968/1969: Delcourt house in Croix, France
  • 1969: House Pescher in Wuppertal, Germany

Book publications

  • How is America building? Julius Hoffmann, Stuttgart 1926
  • America: The Style of New Building in the United States . Anton Schroll Verlag, Vienna 1930
  • Mystery and Realities of the Site . Morgan & Morgan, Scarsdale (New York) 1951
  • Survival Through Design . Oxford University Press, New York 1954
  • If we want to go on living . Claasen, Hamburg 1955
  • Life and Human Habitat . Alexander Koch, Stuttgart 1956
  • World and home . Alexander Koch, Stuttgart 1961
  • Life and Shape . Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York 1962
  • Designed environment. Experiences and demands of an architect. Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1968 ( Fundus series 20/21)
  • Building close to nature . Alexander Koch, Stuttgart 1970
  • Introduction to: Heinz Geretsegger, Max Peintner : Otto Wagner 1841–1918. The expanding city, the beginning of modern architecture . Translated by Gerald Onn. Pall Mall, London 1970
  • Plants water stones light . Parey, Berlin 1974
  • Building and the sensory world . Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1977
  • Nature Near: The Late Essays of Richard Neutra . Edited by William Marlin. Capra Press, Santa Barbara (California) 1989
  • Life and Shape: The Autobiography of Richard Neutra . Atara Press, Los Angeles 2014

Literature (selection)

  • Richard Neutra. Introduction and remarks by Rupert Spade. With photographs by Yukio Futagawa. Simon and Schuster, New York 1971
  • Sylvia Lavin: Form follows libido: architecture and Richard Neutra in a psychoanalytic culture. MIT Press, Cambridge MA 2004
  • Barbara MacLamprecht: Richard Neutra. Complete works. Edited by Peter Goessel. Afterword and photographs by Julius Shulman. Taschen, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-8228-6622-9 (English, French, German)
  • Barbara Lamprecht: Richard Neutra 1892–1970. Design for a better life. Taschen, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-8228-2448-8 .
  • Arthur Drexler, Thomas S. Hinze: The architecture of Richard Neutra. From international style to California modern. Museum of Modern Art, New York 1982
  • Thomas S. Hines : Richard Neutra and the search for modern architecture. A biography and history. University of California Press, Berkeley 1982
  • Esther McCoy: Richard Neutra. G. Braziller, New York 1960. German edition: Otto Maier, Ravensburg 1962
  • Christian Wolsdorff:  Neutra, Richard Joseph. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , pp. 187 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Udo Weilacher : visionary gardens. The modern landscapes by Ernst Cramer. Birkhäuser, Basel a. a. 2001, ISBN 3-7643-6568-4 (Chapter Swiss Gardens for Richard Neutra )
  • Johannes Stoffler: Gustav Ammann. Landscapes of Modernity. gta Verlag, Zurich 2008. ISBN 978-3-85676-194-3
  • Klaus Leuschel & MARTa Herford (ed.): Richard Neutra in Europe. Buildings and projects 1960 to 1970. DuMont, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-8321-9286-0
  • Katrin Eberhard: Machines at home. The mechanization of living in the modern age. gta Verlag, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-85676-276-6 .
  • Harriet Roth: Richard Neutra in Berlin. The history of the Zehlendorf houses. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2016, ISBN 978-3-7757-4153-8
  • Harriet Roth: Richard Neutra. Architect in Berlin. Hentrich & Hentrich Verlag, Berlin Leipzig, 2019, (Jewish miniatures vol. 233), ISBN 978-3-95565-317-0 .

See also

Web links

Commons : Richard Neutra  - collection of images, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. ↑ Austria Lexicon on the Web
  2. ^ Weixlgärtner, Josephine Theresia , in: Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.2. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 1233
  3. ^ A b c d e Felix Czeike: Historisches Lexikon Wien , Volume 4, Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-218-00546-9 , p. 393, collaboration on the keyword Günther Berger
  4. ↑ a b Richard Neutra #Biography in the English language Wikipedia
  5. ↑ a b c d . Richard Neutra in the architectural dictionary of the Architekturzentrum Wien
  6. ^ Francis Nenik, Sebastian Stumpf: Seven Palms. The Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles . Spector Books, Leipzig 2018, ISBN 978-3-95905-180-4 , pp. 96 .
  7. ↑ a b Laura Weissmüller: Martini-Moderne - shaken and chilled. Return to Europe. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . 8/9 May 2010, p. 18
  8. ^ Thomas S. Hines: Richard Neutra and the search for modern architecture: a biography and history . University of California Press, 1994, p. 208.
  9. ↑ UBM magazine on the occasion of an exhibition about Neutra in the Wien Museum in spring 2020; more precise sources are presented in the exhibition and can be read in the catalog.
  10. ^ Past Academicians "N" / Neutra, Richard Josef ANA 1964 ( Memento from January 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) nationalacademy.org; Retrieved July 5, 2015
  11. ^ Members: Richard J. Neutra. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 17, 2019 .
  12. ↑ In Type we Trust  ( page no longer available , search in web archives ), zfamedien.de, accessed on October 22, 2016.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.zfamedien.de
  13. ↑ Neutra Face of House Industries
  14. ↑ Brigitte Hausmann (ed.): New, big, green - 100 years of modern architecture in southwest Berlin. Greater Berlin and the consequences for Steglitz and Zehlendorf , Berlin: Gebrüder Mann 2020, ISBN 9783786128441 , pp. 66–69.
  15. ↑ Thomas Pressberger: US house owner stumbles upon Austrian star architects. In: Courier. Courier, February 11, 2019, accessed February 12, 2019 .
  16. ↑ mediaTUM - media and publication server. Retrieved August 25, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Pictures of the Gonzalez Gorrondona House
personal data
SURNAME Neutra, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Neutra, Richard Joseph (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian architect
DATE OF BIRTH April 8, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH April 16, 1970
Place of death Wuppertal