Richard Neutra was an influential Austrian-American architect who helped pioneer the International Style of architecture in the United States. Some of Neutra's most prominent works included the Lovell Health House (1929), the first steel-framed house in the US, the VDL Research House (1932) which experimented with space and psychology, and the Kaufmann House (1946) in Palm Springs with its iconic floating design. Neutra designed buildings using simple geometric forms with an emphasis on connecting the interior and exterior through the use of glass and steel. He is recognized for bringing modernist architecture to the US through his personalized approach.

1. Richard Neutra (1892-1970)
“I am an eyewitness to the ways in which people
relate to themselves and to each other, and my
work is a way of scooping and ladling that
experience.”

2. Early life
Richard Joseph Neutra was born in Leopoldstadt, the 2nd district of
Vienna, Austria Hungary, on April 8, 1892 into a wealthy Jewish family.
Richard attended the Technical University of Vienna and was influenced
early on by the writings of William Wundt and the teachings of, Adolph
Loos architect, who had visited the United States and was wildly
enthusiastic about the country’s openness and opportunities for
innovation.
His plans for America were set back by the interruption of World War I
where he served in the Austrian Cavalry for two years.
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 moved to the United States by 1923 working first in New York
and then later in Chicago.
 Neutra worked briefly for Frank Lloyd Wright before accepting an
invitation from Rudolf Schindler to work and live communally in
Schindler's Kings Road House in California.
 He subsequently developed his own practice and went on to design
numerous buildings embodying the International Style.

3. Architectural style and Philosophy of design
• Though Modernism is sometimes criticized for imposing universal rules on different people and areas, it was
Richard J. Neutra's intense client focus that won him acclaim. His personalized and flexible version of modernism
created a series of private homes that were - and still are - highly sought after, making him one of the United
States' most significant mid century modernists.
• Neutra became famous for the simple geometries of his designs, which were often made of steel and glass, and
the prefabricated elements that made them extremely easy to build with a modernist look.
• Known for rigorously geometric yet airy structures, Neutra worked with a keen sensitivity towards blending the
interior and exterior of a space such that it would “place man in relationship with nature; that’s where he
developed and where he feels most at home.”
• This philosophy grew out of his feeling that “our environment is often chaotic, irritating, inhibitive and disorienting.
It is not generally designed at all, but amounts to a cacophonous, visually discordant accretion of accidental
events, sometimes euphemized as ‘urban development’ and ‘economic progress’.”
• As Time eloquently observed Neutra’s buildings as, "Their beauty, like that of any sea shell, is more than skin-
deep—practical, not pretentious."
• Neutra coined the term biorealism, which means "the inherent and inseparable relationship between man and
nature.“
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4. Prominent Works
• Lovell Health House, CA (1929)
• VDL Research House , Los Angeles, CA(1932)
• Kaufmann House, Palm Springs, CA (1946)
• Moore House, Ojai, CA (1952)
• Gettysburg Cyclorama Centre, PA (1961)
• The Swirbul Library at Adelphi University, Long Island, NY (1963)
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5. Lovell Health House
• Neutra design the Lovell House for Philip Lovell and his family in Los
Angeles, California between 1927-1929
• The Lovell House was the turning point in Neutra’s career, putting him on
the architectural radar.
• The Lovell House was designed for the active, health conscious Lovell
family in the hills of Los Angeles.
• The house has a simplified form and lacks decoration, maintains balance
without strict symmetry, remains transparent and displays its structure,
and takes advantage of mass-production techniques, all fundamental
features of the International Style.
• The way the Lovell House manages to maintain an aesthetic of balance
without being symmetrical is impressive. The cantilevering floors look
similar to Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Fallingwater” which also shows nice
balance.
• The house suggests a combination of Frank Lloyd Wright’s use of planes
and a sleek aesthetic seen in Le Corbusier’s work.
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6. Lovell Health House
Lower Level Plan
Intermediate Level Plan
Upper Level Plan
• The Lovell House is claimed to be the first house in the United
States to use a steel structure that is typically found in skyscraper
construction – Neutra learned these new techniques when he was
working in New York and with Holabird & Roche in Chicago.
• This led to a light steel frame with stucco finish perched on a
concrete base, much of which was placed via pump and hose. By
using standard industrial steel sash, Neutra achieved the most
economical method of supporting the glass and allowing a certain
amount of window washing from inside.
• The construction of a full-scale swimming pool with diving board
suspended above grade—long before mass pool industry was
born—must have been revolutionary in its time.
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Steel Frame
Elevation

7. VDL Research House
• Built in 1932, the VDL Research House was conceived as an experiment
in architecture, biology and human psychology.
• Neutra called it the VDL Research house, after his benefactor Dr CH Van
Der Leeuw.
• Neutra gave more importance to the psychological comfort and change
the perception by illusions of space and are therefore "stretched" space as
much as possible.
• For example he prolonged the upper band of stucco by the volume of the
room to frame the entrance below.
• A large mirror visually double the space of the narrow entrance. It also
introduced a hallmark that worked only at night: the lights in the overhang,
with translucent glass, its light expanded the space for housing.
• Besides the glass reflector also acted and provided an effect of intimacy.
The abundance of glass provide light and views in all directions. The roof
of the wooden roof, which is accessed through a ship's ladder attached to
the wall east of the porch, providing a private outdoor space.
• Accessible and democratic in style, Neutra focused on technology and
economy as a means to explore contemporary housing design and social
interaction.
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8. VDL Research House
• As Neutra could not afford to build the house entirely of steel, but wanted to
give the effect of strips of windows like those of the skyscraper, altered the
conventional construction of wooden boards (2x4) and used larger tables (4x4),
rolled to house pairs of windows with steel swing.
• The pairs of windows dictate a sharp one-meter module, a pace dimensional
which became standard for many of Neutra houses in the upper deck used
sheets of glass largest fixed in the same module.
• Beams of precast concrete floors and tables suspended provided fire
resistance, which turned out to be a blessing from heaven thanks to them, the
files in the basement survived the fire of 1962.
• Neutra convince manufacturers that donate material such as aluminium foil,
using combinations of rock wool, rigid insulation and lightweight cement
puzzolana. The folding doors industrial steel and glass leading to the porch
outside.
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Upper Level Plan
Intermediate Level Plan
Lower Level Plan

9. Kaufmann House
• Kaufmann House was a vacation home for Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr. and
his family to escape the harsh winters of the northeast.
• The design of the house is quite simplistic; at the centre of the house is
the living room and the dining room that is the heart of the house and the
family activity.
• The rest of the house branches out like a pinwheel in each of the cardinal
directions. From the centre of the house each wing that branches out
has its own specific function; however, the most important aspects of the
house are oriented east/west while the supporting features are oriented
north/south.
• The north and south wings are the most public parts of the house that
connect to the central living area. The south wing consists of a covered
walkway that leads from the centre of the house to the carport.
• The house’s swimming pool is one of the most iconic and recognizable
aspects of the Kaufmann House; however, it is not solely a photographic
gem or simply a recreational feature. The swimming pool creates a
compositional balance of the overall design of the house.
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10. Kaufmann House
• The low, horizontal planes that make up the pinwheel design bring the
house closer to the landscape making it appear as if it is hovering above
the ground.
• The floating effect is emphasized through a series of sliding glass doors
that open up to cover walkways or patios.
• The way in which Neutra designed the Kaufmann House was such that
when the sliding glass doors were opened the differentiation of interior
and exterior was blurred as if it was a sinuous space.
• The flow from interior to exterior space is not simply a spatial condition
rather it is an issue of materiality that creates the sinuous experience.
• The glass and steel make the house light, airy, and open, but it is the use
of stone that solidifies the houses contextual relationship.
• The light colored, dry set stone, what Neutra calls “Utah buff,” brings out
the qualities of the glass and steel, but it also blends into the earthy tones
of the surrounding landscape of the stone, mountains, and trees.
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Plan

11. Moore House
• To service the twenty acres of adjacent groves, the owner asked Neutra’s
firm to provide storage for at least 20,000 gallons of water for fire and
irrigation reserves.
• Instead of a utilitarian storage tank, they opted to create an on-grade
reflection pool.
• The result was the spectacular signature piece of this house and created
the illusion of the building floating on water in the arid environs of dry Ojai
highlands.
• The assignment was to provide a water reserve. The solution was an
inspiration! To this day, the house, seemingly floating on a water garden,
is an oasis in the hot arid climate of the desert Southwest.
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12. Cyclorama Centre
• A major design determinant for the Gettysburg Cyclorama Centre was
the housing of a grandiose cyclorama painting of the battle.
• It was some 30 feet high and over 100 feet in diameter, and had to be
accessed from within and from below to avoid having to cut a door into
the painting itself. Placement of this element was to become a major
challenge.
• His solution was to place the painting "upstairs" out of sight—and out of
mind—unless one was determined to view it.
• A continuous stream of visitors could best be accommodated by a two-
way ramp, so that people could be moving up and into position for a
presentation while others were moving down.
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Roof during construction

13. Swirbul Library
• The Swirbul Library building was by far the largest that had been built on
campus to that date, and no one was expecting the impact of following
the local code on storm water disposal.
• The system in usage was to build what amounted to a seepage pit 8 feet
in diameter and 25 feet deep to dispose of run-off for each 1200 square
feet of roof area.
• One had to space these units no closer than 50 feet from each other.
Buildings on campus had used three or four of these in the past. This
building would have required twenty-five which threatened the feasibility
of the project.
• The idea was to release the water in spurts separated by enough hours
to allow the water to be absorbed at the rates estimated by the soil
experts.
• He ended up building only six of these drywells instead of twenty-five. A
motorized valve was inserted in the downspout line which was
programmed to operate for so many minutes every six hours or so. A
sensor would turn this circuit on when a float indicated the presence of
water on the roof. A heating coil kept it from freezing in winter and
facilitated drainage during snow and ice conditions.
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14. Furniture Design
Boomerang Chair Camel Table
Lounge Chair Lamp
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15. Sources
• http://www.theagencyre.com/richardneutra/
• http://www.neutra.org/modern.html
• http://www.archdaily.com/616668/spotlight-richard-neutra
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Neutra
• http://modernistarchitecture.blogspot.in/2015/04/neutras-vdl-research-house-ii.html
• https://en.wikiarquitectura.com/index.php/VDL_Research_House_I
• http://www.failedarchitecture.com/richard-neutras-therapeutic-architecture/
• http://www.neutra-vdl.org/site/default.asp
• http://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/richard-neutra-slideshow/all
• http://www.ncmodernist.org/neutra.htm