Arts and Letters

Richard Neutra, internationally famous pioneer in contemporary architecture, housing expert and city planner, was a man of great originality and versatility. For over fifty years his "total design" approach to planning, an idyllic relationship of interiors and landscape, produced a number of remarkable houses, apartments, schools, hospitals, and other projects of varied nature, both large and small.

Born and educated in Vienna, as a young man he worked in collaboration with Erich Mendelsohn in Berlin. He came to the United States in 1923, and studied with Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1925 he opened his own office in Los Angeles, where he continued his practice, which ranged throughout this and many foreign countries, until his death in April 1970.

In 1923, in America, the spirit of the Beaux Arts reigned supreme. A group of commercial architects held all the work in their own hands. The result: a barren, mercantile classicism. Neutra's early outdoor-indoor oriented residences of glass and cantilevered construction were like a breath of spring. They began to attract nationwide attention and were soon followed by many more dramatically different, humanistic structures.

Neutra, though influenced in his early years by Corbusier and Wright, actually belonged to a new generation. In his youth in Europe he witnessed the emergence of the movement which became the fundamental element of his artistic creed. What was in the nineteen twenties a new vision of architecture—involving the interrelation and penetration of the vertical and horizontal, transparent and opaque planes, open radiation into landscape—has become by now a fact of everyday life. Neutra preserved in practice the artistic integrity which emanated from the schemes of the early twenties.

None of the creative architects of this century are specialists limited to a single type of building, to hospitals, schools, office buildings, or family housing. Neutra was no exception. His buildings are of a natural originality, clear and simple in their architectural form. Free and rational in their plan arrangement, they show an ideal combination of clear functional concept with a chaste, subtle beauty. They are most suited to serve their uses in an ideal manner. Luxury is omitted or limited to a convincing application of the latest technical achievements. Economy is here the result of a far-reaching detailed pre-planning and prefabrication, the latter a subject in which he was intensely interested.

At the focal point of Neutra's architecture is man. In his professional work, on journeys as at home, he never tired of coming close to human beings in sympathetic, empathic observation. His theories on design for life and wholesomeness are demonstrated in all his work. He formulated a new humanist declaration—architecture honoring human physiology. He advocated design for life and health, especially mental health. He felt that design must be adapted to actual living processes, that it can harm or help them, while they unroll in time as well as in space. He saw the architect's function as primarily that of creating the properly scaled environment suitable to the needs of human beings. He called this "biological architecture" and also "biological realism."

Neutra was a city-dweller. He approached nature, man, and materials with the analytical eye of a scientist. Naturally, he had a barrier of tradition to overcome. One client said of him: "My husband didn't like Neutra's design at first, but, like a good husband, he gave in to me. Since we lived in this house, its atmosphere has had a most happy influence on his daily life."

Richard Neutra, the man, was a kind, considerate individual with a warm, outgoing personality. He loved to talk with students and was an excellent public speaker. His wife, Dione, was his lifelong companion, adviser, confidante, and helpmate. His son Dion became his partner and is continuing the great architectural tradition established by the father.

The following quotation is probably most typical of Richard Neutra, the idealist: "I could not have struggled through life if it had not been for my faith that in a modest way I could, as an architect, contribute a little toward the preservation of humankind and existence—something of objective value." It can be said with certainty that he succeeded.