Richard Joseph Neutra

Lists and proposes in simple form suitable lines of research for building and planning on a more biological basis

Survival Through Design

Thomas S. Hines

"An important contribution to the understanding of 'modernist' culture in the United States and a perceptive analysis of the achievement of a major American architect, with a European background and an international reputation."--William Jordy, Brown University "This study, part biography and part architectural analysis, is a modern masterpiece of architectural history. The prose is lucid and sometimes elegant--very much like the work of Richard Neutra which it so brilliantly examines."--Peter Gay, Yale University "An important contribution to the understanding of 'modernist' culture in the United States and a perceptive analysis of the achievement of a major American architect, with a European background and an international reputation."--William Jordy, Brown University

A Biography and History

Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture

Shows how architect Richard Neutra tried to provide through his architecture a link with the natural world and an environment to enrich the lives of its users.

Building with Nature

Since he followed it all of his life, Richard Neutra (1892-1970) must have relished the maxim of the Greek philosopher Socrates: "The unexamined life is not worth living." In his books, articles, lectures, correspondence, and even casual conversations, Neutra constantly examined, not only his own life, but the lives of others - present and past - and the human and natural world they inhabited. Nowhere was this truer than in his autobiography "Life and Shape", first published in 1962, which now, after years of being out of print, has again happily come back to life. As opposed to "Survival Through Design" (1954), his superb collection of densely philosophical essays, Neutra took a different tack in "Life and Shape", following a lighter and more deliberately relaxed approach. It was as if the usually serious and intense Neutra was giving himself permission to reveal his richly ironic sense of humor and to probe areas in his personal experience which he had not examined as closely before. These included hitherto unrecorded memories of his parents, siblings, and his childhood and education in imperial Vienna, his numbing experiences as an Austrian artillery officer in World War I, and the beginnings of his architectural consciousness in his response to the work of Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, Erich Mendelsohn, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright. As in the autobiographies of Sullivan and Wright, "Life and Shape" concentrates on Neutra's earlier years, both in Europe and America. While he naturally recounts his memories of such well-known commissions as the Lovell Health House (1929), his own Van der Leeuv Research House (1933) and the von Sternberg House (1935), he also muses on such less famous buildings as the small, and now virtually forgotten, Mosk House (1933). "Life and Shape" also confirms Neutra's obsession with the passage of time and his firm resolution never to waste it. Like Sullivan and Wright, Neutra eschewed writing a factual chronicle, and - at the age of 70 - composed instead a meditation on the aspects of his life and work that seemed, in retrospect, to be the most interesting and significant. He felt no need to try to "include everything" but rather to present an honest recounting of his memory of his life. In writing my own "Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture" [Oxford University Press, 1982; Rizzoli Press, 2006], I relied on "Life and Shape" when I wanted an account of Neutra's experiences told in his own authentic voice. For future generations of architects, historian, and readers, it is good to have it back. - Thomas S. Hines, UCLA Professor Emeritus of History and Architecture

Life and Shape

The correspondence between Richard and Dione Neutra recounts the difficult early years and the developing philoso­phy of a man who would change the look of architecture. But as Thomas S. Hines, Neutra’s biographer, makes clear, the book does far more than trace the devel­opment of two artistic young people: “What you have here is not only valuable material about the making of an archi­tectural career and of a salutary and in­teresting marriage, but documents of Eu­ropean and American social and cultural history in the early twentieth century.” The letters and diary entries describe the period that followed World War I, with the unbelievable inflation in Germany and the Great Depression in America. The settings range from imperial Vi­enna to imperial Japan, and from the nightmare of Ellis Island to a dream-house in Los Angeles. Along the way are fascinating glimpses of and comments from such architects as Gropius, Men­delsohn, Schindler, and Wright that fur­ther document Richard Neutra’s con­cepts, approaches, and attitudes, his frustrations and achievements. Running as a charming counterpoint to these intellectual themes is the story of a romance that was to endure for half a century, for many of the letters are first and foremost love letters that chronicle the Neutra’s meeting, courtship, and first ten years of marriage. The book is gener­ously illustrated by both personal photo­graphs and photographs of Neutra’s work.

Selections from the Letters and Diaries of Richard and Dione Neutra

Richard Neutra, Promise and Fulfillment, 1919-1932

Esther McCoy

Richard Neutra

Stephen Leet

In 1937, the architect and his sophisticated client produced a masterwork of forward-thinking and artful architecture."

Richard Joseph Neutra

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