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Are Neutra and Schindler Relevant A Hundred Years Later?

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    Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design 2379 Glendale Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90039 (map)
 

Courtesy of Raymond Neutra

The Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design and the MAK Center for Art and Architecture are pleased to present “Are Neutra and Schindler Relevant A Hundred Years Later?” Please join us at the Neutra Institute for presentations by Todd Cronan, Frank Escher, James Guthrie, and Barbara Lamprecht followed by a discussion with Raymond Neutra. 

This program is free and open to the public at the Neutra Institute for Survival through Design. Please click here to RSVP. 

ABOUT

Todd Cronan: “What is a House?”: R. M. Schindler, 1920-1934

When R. M. Schindler came to Los Angeles in 1920 he brought with him a range of new ideas from Europe that transformed the landscape of California. At the center of his concerns was a question he repeatedly asked in his lectures, “What is a house?” This talk will consider his first houses and projects in California, focused on the way he organized space in terms of site, materials, program, client, economy and expression. After establishing his basic architectural approach, I will also touch on the ways in which he fundamentally reoriented his practice in his late work.

Frank Escher: Lovell Health House

Between 1922 and 1929 Rudolf Schindler and Richard Neutra designed and built nine projects for the extended Lovell family - including for Dr. Lovell’s brother David and for Leah Lovell’s sister Harriet Freeman. The two most significant commissions were Schindler’s 1926 Beach House and Neutra’s 1929 Health House. Escher will discuss these projects, with a focus on the Health House, its history and reception, and the restoration, which Escher GuneWardena Architecture is finalizing.

Barbara Lamprecht: One Hundred Years: Neutra and Schindler 1925 - 1930

With Schindler’s involvement, how did Neutra create the Jardinette Apartments, one of the world’s few apartment buildings ever to be built in the International Style? What were his intentions for the inhabitants of these 43 tiny units? It was designed almost at the same time as the Lovell Health House, but utterly different in conception and execution. After early international publicity, the next century brought disrepute, never visited, never discussed. After extraordinary challenges, this orphan has come back to life to assume its rightful place in the Neutra canon and in Los Angeles. Lamprecht will discuss its tortured rebirth and also compare it to some of its global contemporaries.

James B. Guthrie: Wish you were Here. Postcards from Amerika. The early writings of Richard J. Neutra

In early 1925, while still in Chicago and just before moving to Los Angeles, Richard J. Neutra began writing his first book, Wie Baut Amerika? It was the first of four key German-language publications—two books and two magazine articles—released between 1925 and 1930. Together, these works introduced Neutra and Southern California architecture to a European audience.

These writings reflect Neutra’s early impressions of American architecture, his curiosity about his new environment, and his desire to communicate what he was learning to colleagues back home. Guthrie’s talk will look at all four publications, with a focus on the last book in the group, Amerika, to understand what Neutra found compelling about Southern California and how he began to frame it for a primarily international readership.

TODD CRONAN

Todd Cronan is Professor of Art History at Emory University and editor-in-chief of nonsite.org. He is author of Against Affective Formalism: Matisse, Bergson, Modernism (2013), Red Aesthetics: Rodchenko, Brecht, Eisenstein (2021), Nothing Permanent: Modern Architecture in California (2023) and coeditor of Minor White, Memorable Fancies (2025). He has also written on art and politics for Jacobin, The Nation, Brooklyn Rail, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Common Dreams.

FRANK ESCHER

Frank Escher has been principal, in partnership with Ravi GuneWardena, at Escher GuneWardena Architecture since 1995.

The firm’s broad range of work includes collaborations with contemporary artists, such as Mike Kelley, Stephen Prina, and Sharon Lockhart, art- related projects (Blum Gallery, Los Angeles) and numerous exhibition design projects internationally. Historic preservation projects encompass works by Schindler, A. Q. Jones, Eames and Paul R. Williams, and include the ongoing restorations of the R. Neutra 1929 Lovell Health House, and John Lautner’s own 1939 residence.

Escher is the editor of the monograph “John Lautner, Architect”, and serves on the board of the John Lautner Foundation, the Julius Shulman Institute, the advisory board of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, and the Schindler House Conservation Committee. He also co- curated Between Earth and Heaven: The Architecture of John Lautner (Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 2007).

Escher trained at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH, Zürich, Switzerland) and has been a visiting professor at USC, Cal Poly Pomona, the University of Oregon, and the Federal Institute of Technology (EPF Lausanne). “Clocks and Clouds”, a monograph of the firm’s work, was released by Birkhäuser in 2017 in conjunction with their retrospective exhibition at the Art, Design and Architecture Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

JAMES B. GUTHRIE

James B. Guthrie is an architect, author, and president of the Irving J. Gill Foundation. He lectures and writes on the origins of modern architecture and is currently collaborating with The Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design on the first English translation of Richard J. Neutra’s book Amerika (1930). Guthrie edited The Sacred Architecture of Irving J. Gill and One California Architect: Irving J. Gill and has organized major exhibitions and symposia on Gill’s legacy throughout Southern California.

BARBARA LAMPRECHT

Barbara Lamprecht is a Pasadena-based architectural historian specializing in the evaluation, designation, and rehabilitation of twentieth century buildings. She is the author of Neutra: Complete Works (Taschen, 2000), Neutra (Taschen 2004), and Richard Neutra Furniture: The Body and the Senses (Wasmuth, 2015). Published by Atara Press, Lamprecht has written an introduction to a new, annotated, and definitive edition of Neutra’s manifesto, Survival Through Design, to be released soon, and has just finished her fourth book, Neutra, Nature, and Embodiment, now under publisher’s review. Supported by the Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design, it is an in-depth examination of Neutra’s roots in science, his architectural influences, and the resonance of his thinking in contemporary neuroscience and the brain/body/environment connection. The California Preservation Foundation presented her with the 2022 President’s Award for her work in expanding Neutra scholarship. Lamprecht earned an M.Arch. at Cal Poly Pomona and her Ph.D. at the University of Liverpool.

RAYMOND NEUTRA

Raymond Richard Neutra, a retired physician and environmental epidemiologist, is Richard Neutra's remaining son and President of the Neutra Institute. He will moderate this first event celebrating the centennial of his parents arrival in Los Angeles and will participate in the panel discussion afterwards.

MAK CENTER FOR ART AND ARCHITECTURE

The MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles is a contemporary, experimental, multi-disciplinary center for art and architecture and is headquartered in three architectural landmarks by the Austrian-American architect Rudolph M. Schindler. Founded in 1994, the MAK Center is a Los Angeles-based 501(c)3 non-profit organization and the California satellite of the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna. The core of the programming includes the internationally recognized MAK Artists and Architects-in-Residence Program, an annual residency program for emerging international artists and architects. The MAK Center works in cooperation with the Friends of the Schindler House (FoSH), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to preserve and maintain Schindler's Kings Road house in West Hollywood.

NEUTRA INSTITUTE FOR SURVIVAL THROUGH DESIGN

The Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design is a 501c3 charitable organization founded by famous architect Richard Neutra in 1962. He named it after the title of his 1954 book Survival Through Design. In that book he argued that the survival of humans and the planet requires a commitment to research-inspired design that artfully combines technology and nature. He called this “biorealism.” We have two missions: to preserve and share the Neutra legacy and to promote creative research-inspired design that serves people and the planet.

 
 
 
 
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