Neutra

 It started with a New Yorker article published in September 2021. It profiled an Austrian-born architect and designer named Richard Neutra, who settled in Los Angeles and designed hundreds of homes here and across the U.S., helping usher in the mid-century modern style. 

The article’s lead image was a Neutra-designed home in the Los Feliz hills called Health House, which typified his approach to blurring indoors and outdoors, something that feels uniquely possible in southern California. It turns out that Neutra homes are scattered across the city, many in neighborhoods not far from ours — and the LA home he built (and then rebuilt after a fire) hosts tours every Saturday!

I got really jazzed reading about all of these gems in our backyard — I even grabbed a sharpie and started underlining. 

We made an appointment to tour the Neutra VDL Studio & Residences in early December 2021 that we weren’t able to keep, though we did manage to explore the nearby Neutra Colony, a cluster of eight or so houses he designed near his home on Silverlake Boulevard, each with large panels of windows and his characteristic spider legs — beams that extend beyond the exterior of the house that play with the notion of where a structure begins and ends. A couple of them are still occupied by the original owner or their descendants! 

I was determined to make it back to tour Neutra’s home, and yesterday we found an open time slot. I’d read that many of the homes he designed were around 1500 square feet, and this one seemed right in that ballpark. Neutra’s use of space was really economical — he built couches attached to the wall and his kitchen was pretty tiny — and he made spaces feel larger by using windows as well as mirrored glass. His home felt very light and bright, not confining despite its modest size. Apparently he was precise about every detail, down to knobs on cabinets or the nails that pictures hung on (he even hung some pictures himself!) — leaving detailed notes for contractors and craftspeople that some homeowners kept. 

Since visiting, I’ve been noticing some design touches in our mid-century modern home that are reminiscent of Neutra’s — things like some carefully placed windows that provide a view of greenery and scenery but not of the more mundane activities unfolding at street level. 

I think one of the magical things about Neutra designed homes is that while they look and feel of a certain time and place, they also work today. They’re so stylish! And I love the notion of bringing the outside in or of removing the barrier between the interior and exterior. Seeing so much greenery from inside our home helped me get through the pandemic. It just felt so serene and I felt really lucky. 

Now I’m harboring a dream of hunting down more Neutra homes here in LA and maybe elsewhere too. A fun adventure to have in our own backyard.