by: admin
Dr. Neutra makes the case for the VDL Studio/Residences’ significance.
Daniel Fox
Kenneth Frampton, Assoc. AIA, provided background.
Daniel Fox
Event: Raymond Richard Neutra Presents the Significance and Survival of the Richard and Dion Neutra VDL Studio/Residences in Los Angeles
Location: Center for Architecture, 05.29.12
Introduction: Kenneth Frampton, Assoc. AIA, Ware Professor of Architecture, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation
Speaker: Dr. Raymond Richard Neutra
Organizers: Center for Architecture and the AIANY Historic Buildings Committee
Although Richard Neutra’s son isn’t an architect, you wouldn’t know it. Recently retired as Chief of the Division of Environmental and Occupational Disease Control at the California Department of Public Health, Dr. Raymond Richard Neutra knows much more about architecture than your average epidemiologist. One gets the sense that even if he weren’t the son of Richard (1892-1970), the architect and Frank Lloyd Wright protégé, he would be able to hold forth on the finer details the Viennese Secessionists or ancient Buddhist temples.
Kenneth Frampton, Assoc. AIA, introduced the program, developing Richard Neutra’s backstory with details and photographs, the most interesting of which depicted Erich Mendelsohn with Richard Neutra and Frank Lloyd Wright – one of the Austrian architect’s greatest influences. Dr. Neutra’s goal, however, was much more pointed and personal: to describe the architectural impact of his childhood home and reinforce the cultural significance of his own father, both of which he did superbly.
The Richard and Dion Neutra VDL Studio/Residence, in Los Angeles, named for Cornelius Van Der Leeuw – an early Neutra patron – was built in three phases: 1932, 1940, and 1966. With each section and its own story of development, the three come together to create a space not unlike a Japanese machiya: direct street frontage and a courtyard surrounded by sliding panels for easy access to the outdoors (albeit steel and glass rather than wood and paper).
Bridging the gap between architect father and doctor son, Dr. Neutra spoke about his father’s affinity for the integration of nature into living spaces. This was apparently vital to the architect’s search for biological explanations of Japanese and Wrightian aesthetics. Indeed, this is perhaps their greatest bond: a concern with the built environment’s psychological, social, and physiological effects.
The house, left in 1990 to the Cal Poly Pomona College of Environmental Design, is now in various states of disrepair. Although Dr. Neutra made the case for its significance and continued preservation based on a wide range of criteria, he didn’t have to: its architectural importance is sufficient.
This was a program to benefit the Neutra House renovation. If you would like to contribute, please send checks to Carrie Geurts, College of Environmental Design, Cal Poly Pomona, 3801 W. Temple Avenue, Pomona, CA 91768; checks should be made out to the Cal Poly Pomona Foundation with “Neutra VDL” on the memo line. A limited number of prints of Julius Schulman’s iconic photos of the house are available as well.
Daniel Fox is AIANY Communications Manager and Editor-in-Chief of e-Oculus.