Richard Neutra

Richard Joseph Neutra ( born April 8, 1892 in Vienna 's 2nd district, Leopoldstadt, † April 16, 1970 in Wuppertal ) was an Austrian architect was active primarily in Southern California. He is particularly true in the U.S. as an important representative of the " 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 Elizabeth Glazer ( 1851-1905 ). Richard had two brothers who also emigrated to the USA, and a married sister in Vienna.

Richard Neutra attended until 1910, the Sophie School in Vienna and studied from 1910 to 1918 at the Technical University of Vienna, where he was a pupil of Max Fabiani and Karl Mayr Eder; In 1912 he visited parallel the Adolf Loos - building school. Neutra was influenced by Otto Wagner, without having been his student. In 1912 he undertook with Ernst Ludwig Freud, son of Sigmund Freud, a study trip to Italy and the Balkans.

The First World War interrupted Neutra study. He was employed as a reserve lieutenant in the artillery and fell ill with malaria and tuberculosis. The studies he was able to complete in the summer of 1918. In 1919 he went to the spa in Switzerland. At the same time he studied with Gustav Ammann in Zurich, where he remained a lifelong friendship, garden architecture and design seminar attended by Karl Moser at the ETH Zurich.

1920 Ernst Freud gave him a job at a Berlin architectural office. In 1921 he was admitted to the Stadtbauamt 50 km south of Berlin situated town of Luckenwalde, and was from 1921 to 1923 in Berlin Wizard of Erich Mendelsohn. 1923 won the design of Mendelsohn and Neutra 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, know; the wedding of the two took place on 23 December 1922.

Moved to the United States

Adolf Loos had an interest in the modern American architecture, particularly the buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright, Neutra. Neutra therefore decided in 1923 to work together to relocate with his wife Dione in the United States. Search for jobs in New York, he received in 1924 in the already dominated at that time by skyscrapers in Chicago the leading architectural firm of Holabird & Roche employment. At the funeral of Louis Sullivan, he met with Frank Lloyd Wright, who invited the couple Neutra to his Taliesin (Wisconsin ). There they could stay for several months. In Taliesin Neutra was design for the competition to build the synagogue in Vienna Hietzing, where he was honored with a recognition. Also in 1924 his first son, Frank Lloyd, was born.

In 1925 the couple moved, impressed by a poster with the slogan California Calls You!, To Los Angeles. There he met his Viennese fellow students Rudolph Schindler, who was in 1914 moved to the United States. He was an employee in the architect's office. Schindler and Neutra participated jointly unsuccessful in the competition for the design of the League of Nations Palace in Geneva, fell out in 1926 because of a contract and went from there separate ways.

Since moving to California Neutra was in retrospect the history of architecture as representative of the modern International Style in the United States. In 1926 he received the architect license. His second son Dion was born. In 1929, Richard Neutra U.S. citizen. His youngest son, Raymond came in 1939 to the world.

Neutra's style

Neutra in 1926 received its first major order ( apartment houses). In 1927 he published his book " How to build America?". In Hollywood Hills 1927-1929 he built the house for the Reform Lovell doctor Philip M. Lovell in a still very rare steel structure made ​​of prefabricated parts. His former partner Schindler had designed the 1925-1926 Lovell beach house and was responsible together with Neutra for his garden design.

In Lovell House Neutra realized his architectural ideas. The house had large areas of glass, similar to Wright's buildings, interior and exterior spaces went into each other. However, this order resulted in the separation of Rudolph Schindler. For the five years older could not get over that delivered by him Neutra by a common customer this order executed alone. The house made ​​Neutra by experts internationally known, motivated him after finishing a lecture tour of Europe (1930, he visited Sigmund Freud in Vienna) and was introduced in 1932 in an exhibition of contemporary architecture in the New York Museum of Modern Art.

In the same year Neutra reached the invitation of Josef Frank, mitzubauen at the Werkbundsiedlung in Vienna. He accepted. His design of a single-storey house settlement was built on the 13th District, address, Woinovichgasse 9, between Jagdschlossgasse and Veitingergasse; during the final inspection of the house Neutra was not present.

Neutra built now mainly villas and private houses, which were distinguished by their generosity and harmonious integration with nature. Furthermore, building from the 1930s are: the Channel Heights Housing Project in San Pedro, Neutra's own house in 1932 and the Emerson Jr. High School in West Los Angeles in 1938.

In his designs Neutra developed the modern Californian style on. He combined light metal structures with stucco elements to create a bright, light and air -permeable ensemble. He specialized in the integration of architecture in carefully arranged gardens and landscapes, as well as his own house. Inspired him, especially the contrast geometric shapes to nature. This is particularly visible in the photos of the photographer Julius Shulman. Neutra's architectural ideas were based largely on the needs of its customers. Unlike many other architects he wanted the builders do not impose his own ideas. He was known for his clients to bring forward comprehensive questionnaires in order to take into account as many special wishes. One of Neutra's most famous buildings was the designed for Edgar J. Kaufmann Kaufmann Desert House from 1946, in the lonely landscape near Palm Springs, California, was born.

His architectural philosophy summed Neutra once like this:

" Imagine the people of a connection with nature; where he has developed and where he feels most at home. "

He described his theory as " biorealistische architecture" .. Neutra distanced himself strongly on the dogmatic functionalism.

Cooperations

1948 undertook Neutra been a recent lecture tour of Europe. From 1949 to 1964 ( according to other sources until 1959 ) came to the office community with the architect Robert E. Alexander. 1952 Neutra built the Moore House in Ojai with a reflecting pool, which creates the illusion that the house floats on a water garden. '' (Richards son Dion ). Dion became a partner in the 1960s Richards. 1961 emerged the Palos Verdes High School and in the same year, the Fine Arts Building Columbia State University at Northridge, which however has been so badly damaged in an earthquake in 1994 that it had to be demolished.

In 1962 Neutra 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 presented the Los Angeles Hall of Records finished, in 1964, the Kuhns House in Woodland Hills, 1965, the villas Bucerius and Rentsch in Switzerland. In his last years he worked in France. In addition, he designed in collaboration with Alexander school buildings, churches, commercial buildings and museums in various countries. In later Villenbauten in Switzerland in the 1960s, he collaborated with the Zurich landscape architect Ernst Cramer, also a student of Gustav Ammann. The designs of the late 1960s in collaboration with his son Dion Neutra.

Almost all the work of Richard Neutra from the period 1940-1967 were published in the journal Arts & Architecture by John Entenza.

Evening of life in Vienna

From 1966 to 1969 Richard Neutra lived in Vienna ( the studio in Los Angeles, now under the name of Richard & Dion Neutra, already his son and heir initiated ) and died in 1970, again on a lecture tour in Europe, during the visit of he designed the house Kemper in Wuppertal of heart failure; his urn was buried in Los Angeles. His son continued the architectural work continued at the workplace of his father. In the 1990s, coined by this style experienced a renaissance.

Awards and Tributes

Neutra in 1950 from the University of Graz to the doctor hc appointed. In 1958 he received the Prize of the City of Vienna for Architecture, 1959, the Federal Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. He was in Vienna since 1961 Honorary Member of the Artists' Association Secession. In 1967 he was awarded the Honorary Ring of the City of Vienna. In 1969 he was honored by the University of California Los Angeles with an honorary doctorate.

Richard Neutra was also an honorary member of professional associations, such as the Royal Institute of British Architects. The often found indicating that he was a freeman of the city of Vienna, does not correspond to the facts.

In the district of Leopoldau the Richard Neutra - street is named after him since 1974. A font family bears his name.

Buildings

Book publications

  • America: The style formation of the new architecture in the United States. Anton Schroll Verlag, Wien 1930
  • Building and the sense-world. Publisher of Art, Dresden 1977
  • Introduction to: Heinz Geretsegger, Max Peintner: Otto Wagner 1841-1918. The expanding city, the beginning of modern architecture. Übers by Gerald Onn. Pall Mall, London 1970
  • Life and Human Habitat. Alexander Koch, Stuttgart 1956
  • Life and Shape. Appleton - Century- Crofts, New York 1962
  • Mystery and Realities of the Site. Morgan & Morgan, Scarsdale (New York) 1951
  • Nature Near: The Late Essays of Richard Neutra. Edited by William Marlin. Capra Press, Santa Barbara (California ) 1989
  • Semi-natural construction. Alexander Koch, Stuttgart 1970
  • Plants Waterstones light. Parey, Berlin 1974
  • Survival Through Design. Oxford University Press, New York 1954
  • World and apartment. Alexander Koch, Stuttgart 1961
  • If we want to continue to live. Claasen, Hamburg 1955
  • How Build America. Julius Hoffmann, Stuttgart 1926

Literature (selection )

  • Richard Neutra. Introduction and notes 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. Bags, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-8228-6622-9 (English, French, German )
  • Barbara Lamprecht: Neutra 1892-1970. Design for a better life. Bags, 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 ).
  • Udo Weilacher: Visionary gardens. The modern landscapes of Ernst Cramer. Birkhäuser, Basel et al 2001, ISBN 3-7643-6568-4 (Chapter Swiss gardens for Richard Neutra )
  • John 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.
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