Neutra, Richard Josef

Neutra, Richard Josef 

Born Apr. 8, 1892, in Vienna; died Apr. 16, 1970, in Wuppertal, Federal Republic of Germany. American architect.

Neutra graduated from the Technische Hochschule in Vienna in 1917. He also studied at the Technische Hochschule in Zürich from 1918 to 1923. Neutra worked in association with E. Mendelsohn in Berlin in 1921 and 1922. In the following year he moved to the United States, where he worked with F. L. Wright from 1923 to 1925. In 1925 he set up an architectural practice in California.

Neutra combined and popularized the principles of European functionalism and American organic architecture, assigning particular importance to the relationship of a structure with its environment. The buildings he designed have open spatial arrangements and are made from reinforced concrete, glass, and steel frames. Neutra was the architect for the Jardinette Apartments (1927), the Lowell Health House (1927–29), the building of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company in Los Angeles (1952), the Kaufmann desert home in Palm Springs (1946–47), pavilion-type schools (for example, the school on Bell Avenue in Los Angeles, 1935), and housing developments with full traffic segregation (Channel Heights, San Pedro, 1942–44).

WORKS

Survival Through Design. New York, 1954.
Life and Human Habitat. New York-Stuttgart, 1956.

REFERENCE

Zevi, B. Richard Neutra. Milan, 1954.