Richard Neutra: Architect, Therapist or Client?

TU Munich - Faculty of Architecture - Chair of History of Architecture and Curatorial Practice Prof. Dr. Andres Lepik - Seminar Architecture and its Representation (Exiled in Paradise.

California

Modernism)

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Sina

BrĂźckner-Amin

M.A

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Summer

semester

2019

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Richard Neutra: architect, therapist or client?

Anneleen Brandt - ge52jox@mytum.de - ge52jox - Architecture - Master Degree Program

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Table of content

Introduction

3

Background

4

Neutra’s personalit(y)/ies

4

The empathic lover

5

The analyst and mother

6

The little brother

8

The manipulating other

9

The Perkins House

10

Conclusion

13

Pictures

14

Bibliography

15

Additional literature

15

Index of pictures

15

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Richard Neutra: architect, therapist or client?

Approaching Richard Neutra, who claimed to be able to cure neuroses through architecture [1], as an architectural student with no background in psychology whatsoever, led me to be particularly interested in the aspect of how this ‘curing’ would be shaped architecturally. During my research, I expected to discover a link between the client’s mental state, anxiety, traumas… and the architectural elements designed specifically for each individual client in order to cure their specific problem. This would result in a sort of manual for a ‘do it yourself’ project. As assembling a cupboard would require ten screws, six wooden boards and a screwdriver, curing anxiety type A (corresponding to client A) would require two big windows, one overhang roof and a free floor plan. Being able to construct a manual for ‘curing neuroses’ based on the houses Neutra designed, would have given him more credibility for his claim.

As an architect, I would have been delighted to attest that Neutra was able to cure his clients through architecture. It would have been a breakthrough that would change the practice of psychologists and therapists drastically, their job would be so much easier if they could send their patients home with a building permit for an organically shaped mirroring pool and a glass corner. The idea of specific architectural elements that could influence the state of mind and therefore ameliorate living conditions is not that farfetched nor declares Neutra a madman for trying, the questionable aspect of it though, is the way in which he attempted to do it. Neutra not only tried to cure illnesses, but he also wanted to design and provide ‘happiness’ and ‘satisfaction’ for his clients. These aspects, basically what goes on in a person’s mind, are about the most personal and individual issues possible. Therefore, I would have expected that every client enjoyed a different treatment and the house, as a result of an intense sort of therapy session between Neutra and the client, would turn out to be the most individual representation of the prescribed cure for that specific client. Surely no two clients wanted the exact same things in life, had the exact same traumas, anxieties, illnesses and concerns, yet it appears that Neutra’s clients received the same treatment, resulting in cures (their new houses) with undeniably great similarities as if they were prescribed by two different people, using the same manual.

‘A Neutra’ was the cure and just like post-war modernist houses were supposed to ‘fit all’, ‘a Neutra’ -house was supposed to ‘cure all’. Even though Neutra was profoundly empathically engaged with his clients to analyse their personal identity, the fact that we can define ‘a Neutra’ by spider-legs, reflecting pools, mitered glass corners and overhang roofs, reveals his need to make a name for himself primarily as an architect rather than as a therapist. The aspect of depersonalisation as Sylvia Lavin explains: “Neutra’s houses never revealed the particular

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pathologies of either architect or client. While he went through great lengths to elicit highly personal information from his clients, Neutra’s buildings were not portraits of individuals.

Indeed, standardization was an important element of his working method.” [2] is one of the elements that gives suspicion to Neutra’s role as a therapeutic architect. Might the cure that doesn’t seem to be client related ultimately be his own personal cure? This paper will shine a new light on Neutra as the supposedly therapeutic architect, by reversing the roles. Maybe the actual client in need of counselling was Neutra himself, who was trying to find his own cure in curing others?

Background Richard Neutra was born in Vienna but gained most of his fame through his work in California, where he went to “live among the other transplanted ones, enjoying and even sharing a little [of] their footlooseness” [3] He described California as “a godsend” [3] and surely he needed this Californian setting to succeed. If it were not for the mild climate, consumerism, the pop culture, movie industry and maybe most importantly the popularisation of psychoanalysis by the 1950s, [2] Neutra’s architecture wouldn’t have stood a chance. He needed California and its writers, producers, artists, directors and actors, but they also needed him, or more specifically, they needed ‘a Neutra’. This term in itself already became sort of a feel good cult and the belief in it was stimulated by the rising popularity of psychoanalysis. Being able to say you lived in ‘a Neutra’ meant you were promised happiness, “delivered through the therapeutics of aesthetic pleasure” [2].

Although Neutra is considered to be a Californian architect, his time in Vienna was of great importance. In ‘fin de siècle’ Vienna, psychoanalysis was on the rise [1], Neutra befriended Sigmund Freud and his son and witnessed how psychoanalysis became domesticated. The insane were no longer locked away in asylums but were now treated in the midst of domestic life, such as in Freud’s office, located in a neo-Renaissance building in an upper-middle-class neighbourhood. The design of Freud’s office interested Neutra, not as a therapeutic device, but as an environment that would aid free association, an environment that as he called it, “put you in the ‘mood’ to respond to treatment.” [2] Neutra’s personalit(y)/ies In reversing the roles and attempting to see Neutra as the actual client, it is important to understand the kind of man he was, even though his personality is hard to grasp. Even In his

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autobiography, he comes across very differently on different occasions, as if his stories would sometimes allow a glimpse of his different personalities to shine through. Surely he wanted to come across as a highly wanted architect and apparently even arranged to receive phone calls in the middle of giving a lecture so he could ask to be excused for a very important call. [4] This however is a trait that could probably be found in a lot of great and upcoming architects wanting to present themselves as more important than they are.

The empathic lover Neutra deeply believed in the concept of empathy and its important role in the creation of architecture. As he was also an architectural theorist and spent a great deal writing about and theorizing architecture, a lot of his writings can be used to analyse his mind and ideas. In an unpublished essay he defines what he calls ‘Empathy-Infeeling’: “It [empathy] is perhaps similar to sympathy, but at any rate quite surpasses it in emotive identification with the other individual. Empathy means in fact a far reaching physiological functioning (with many neuro-cerebral implications) ‘as if’ one were that other individual. However it is only for fractions of time. At other fractions of time one is one-self, and noticeably re-stimulated by that other powerful experience of infeeling into the mate. It is, as it were, an ‘oscillation’ between ‘being the other stimulated by the one, and again the one stimulated by the other’.” [2] This writing makes us understand the importance of the ability of ‘infeeling’ with the client. Neutra’s relationships with his clients were extraordinary and more intense than any therapist would ever have, and would be allowed to have, with a patient. A therapeutic relationship between analyst and analysand is a strictly one-way relationship, but in Neutra’s relationships there wasn’t always a clear boundary between analyst and analysand. He and his client worked together as a husband and wife would and even though there was never a physical relationship with his clients, he claimed that all his female clients fell in love with him. The ‘oscillation’ he spoke about was part of the emotive thrill [2] and made the relationship therapeutic for the client, as well as for Neutra himself. Neutra and his client had a platonic love affair and the house as a result was their love child. The house was a means to project this feeling of empathy into space. As this feeling was materialized, the house symbolized the empathic connection between Neutra and his client and at the same time worked as “a defense against a potentially erotic relationship between architect and client.” as Lavin explains. [2]

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The analyst and mother Post-war American housing was based on standardisation and mass-production. The goal was to build as many houses as possible, as cheap as possible to provide housing for ‘the typical American family’, which resulted in a ‘fits all’ kind of post-war housing.

However, this ‘fits all’ idea changed, as David Reisman claimed in 1950 in his book ‘The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character’: “with the architects’ encouragement and help, it is possible that people are becoming willing to have a house fit them. This requires that they find out who they are.” [5] Who better to take the doctor role on him than Neutra. He assigned himself the absolute psychological authority to analyse and treat neurotic patients, through architecture. According to Neutra, architecture should help clients to fulfil their needs. Peculiar is that Neutra doesn’t define those ‘needs’, as any architect would, in relation to function nor shelter.

Instead, he refers to those needs as ‘unconscious psychical desires’. [2] As an analyst Neutra had two steps in his ‘diagnostic procedure’. The first step was the ‘lying on the couch and talking to the psychoanalyst’-part. He asked his clients to produce information, through the form of filled out questionnaires, diaries, autobiographies, childhood anecdotes, and so on… The second step was ‘diagnosing the patient’. As a client recalled: “[Neutra] went over our letter meticulously underlining words and phrases which he said showed ‘emotional depth and accent.’

Then he prepared an extract, his diagnosis of our personalities and living habits plus his own ideas of what sort of house we would need.” [2] Guiding the patients after diagnosis, crossed the objective boundary between patient and architect (or therapist) that Freud tried to protect. It is clear that Neutra no longer aligned with Freudian ideas, instead he found a closer match with the ideas of Otto Rank, who once was Freud’s most devoted disciple, but now his nemesis after being expelled from Freud’s practice. Neutra’s shift from Freud to Rank became very clear in his conclusion that “architectural clients, unlike traditional psychoanalytic patients, ‘need creative guidance not only reductive analysis’ [as would be according to Freudian ideas].” [2] Both Neutra and Rank saw the relationship with the client or patient as an active emotional engagement, instead of as an uninvolved process with an objective analyst.

[2]

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Rank’s theory about ‘The Trauma of Birth’, which was also the primary cause of his expulsion from Freud’s circle, enjoyed great following by Neutra. The theory stated that “the source of anxiety and hence of neurosis could be found in the moment of birth.” and thus that for Rank “this original and universal experience (…) generated and was related to all subsequent human experiences of anxiety.” [2] By defining the cause for neurosis as the separation from the mother’s womb, and from the mother in general, the therapy itself also got defined and could now be directed towards a specific and known problem. The function of the therapy was now to make the patient concur and master the trauma of birth, in the present. [2] The importance of having multiple shorter sessions, instead of one continuous therapy now becomes evident as well. By having shorter sessions with a clear end date, the patient is demanded to relive the trauma of birth, by separation from the womb (therapy) and from the mother (therapist) over and over again, until the trauma is mastered. Mastering the trauma would mean that the anxiety is cured, or at least controlled by its host.

As Neutra wanted to cure neurosis and was a devoted follower of Rank, it is evident that ‘The Trauma of Birth’ theory found its implementation in Neutra’s work. Important is that Rank as well as Neutra did not see the house as the equivalent of the womb, but as the means to deal with the trauma of birth and as a projection of that trauma into an object. [2] In this theory, Neutra depicts the architect as the mother who has the task to shape the traumatized infant’s environment. The infant representing the client suffering from neurosis, which is caused by being born. The architect also has the role of the midwife, delivering the infant. In order to help the infant deal with the trauma, the trauma is projected into space, resulting in a house, made by the architect. At the end of the treatment, the house can also be seen as a baby, carried and delivered by the architect, to the clients, presenting them fulfilment by curing them. This baby can only be produced after an empathic and intense therapy between the architect and the clients and is at the end presented to them as their love child. They are now finally able to see their child, representing their diagnosis and finally receiving the medicine prescription.

Lavin describes this depiction as follows: “Neutra imagined himself in a dual professional role: through his empathic rapport with clients, he was the analyst of the adult neurotic, and through his design of houses he was the mother of the breastfeeding child. (…) Neutra, in other words, fantasized that he was both an analyst and a mother, and he complained of the client ‘who weans himself prematurely’.” [2]

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The little brother Throughout his life Neutra continuously had influences, in the form of architects and psychologists he looked up to. In the field of architecture his big example in Vienna was Otto Wagner, who fed Neutra’s interest in modernism. He also had, as he called them ‘three American fathers’. [3] The first of which was Adolf Loos, who equally emigrated from Vienna to the States. The second one, a man Neutra truly adored, was Frank Lloyd Wright. While studying in Vienna, Neutra came across a publication of Wright’s Robie House, which had truly drawn him to the States due to its remarkable architecture. He dreamt for years of knocking on Mr. Robie’s door but when he finally got there he found a certain Mrs. Wilson living there, the second owner who was totally unaware of the architectural qualities of the house. Moreover she didn’t like the house at all, she just bought it because it was cheap at the time. His third American father, Louis H. Sullivan was one who lived in his imagination and he did not have a personal relationship with, except for a one time meeting when Sullivan was nearly dying. Neutra really felt deeply for his ‘fathers’, and when Sullivan died, he was grief-struck. Neutra took time off from work and attended the funeral. Wright, who had been Sullivan’s apprentice for many years was also present but didn’t seem to share Neutra’s devastation. Neutra recalls: “He [Wright] did not appear to feel as bereaved as I did. I was downcast because of Sullivan’s death, but I was also discouraged by my meeting with him in the last years of his life, and by seeing what had become of a great pioneer in my chosen profession. It surely was not very encouraging to a young man. And here was still another man [Wright] whom I had admired so long, and he did seem to be disliked; he didn’t appear affluent either, but he was trying to keep a stiff upper lip, look dressy and undaunted.”

[3] Seeing his ‘fathers’ being disliked and their work unappreciated, surely must have stimulated Neutra’s need to be loved and appreciated, even to the extreme, by his own clients.

Even though Neutra is considered to be part of the history of modernism, he was never ascribed a leading role. As Lavin explains: “he [Neutra] is always cast in a supporting role: helping structure triumph over decoration but doing so less vigorously than Mies; pursuing the social program of the avant-garde but with less engagement than Gropius; and blazing the trail of the New Pioneers but with less clarity than Le Corbusier.” [2] In the field of architecture, Neutra never became a major figure like Mies, Gropius or Le Corbusier, however he brought the element of psychoanalysis to the table but since

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his buildings were generally overlooked, the psychologizing of architecture he strongly devoted himself to, also stayed quite invisible. [2] In this light it is clear that Neutra was seen as the little brother of the great modernists, showing them immense love and devotion, but never surpassing them in their field.

The manipulating other The information Neutra gained from his clients through the first step of his ‘diagnostic procedure’ (see ‘The analyst and mother’) served primarily as the foundation of the narrative for the design, but it also provided Neutra with material to (ab)use in a relation of power over the client. As he was particularly interested in trauma, of any kind, not only the trauma of birth, he now possessed information provided by the client in their most vulnerable moments. This was information that could become a very powerful tool in a process of manipulation. Although all of Neutra’s female clients were supposedly in love with him, Lavin states that they all also seemed to be a little afraid of him. [2] This resulted in a situation where his clients had difficulties to refuse his architectural advice and Neutra being able to have almost full architectural freedom and power over the design. Very aware of this power, Neutra was not afraid to use it and as he said himself: “the principle is this – that there must be a way to express to clients profoundly instructed sympathy and excel in intuitive empathy. A man cannot resist you if you are passionately devoted to understanding him. He falls in love with you even if he is a bank president.” [2] Another peculiar aspect is that most of Neutra’s clients seemed to have ultimate trust in his abilities to analyse their minds and to provide them with exactly what they needed.

When you go to a doctor who claims he can cure you, you receive his treatment but in the end you are not cured, you very quickly lose faith in the doctor and will blame him or doubt his abilities. However when in Neutra’s case, he promises ‘soul satisfaction’ [3] to his clients but fails in delivering it to them, they still believe in his capabilities instead of resenting him or accusing him of being a fraud. Again it seems that Neutra had some sort of power over his clients, a power possibly obtained by manipulating them through (ab)using their most personal traumas.

What happened to the clients of the ‘Chuey House’ and their relationship with Neutra will exemplify this theory. In 1955, Josephine and Robert Chuey asked Neutra to design them a house. As the Chueys were both very anxious people, the house had to be a place

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where they could release this nervousness and it had to be an environment that would instigate an increment of their creative energies. However the most important role the house had to fulfil, was creating the perfect environment for Josephine to become a mother and to receive a child. This wish was so important that the house and the way it was designed would literally carry the responsibility of Josephine actually becoming a mother or not. Josephine’s maternal feelings became Neutra’s most important source of information for the narrative of the design and during this process, indeed, Josephine happily announced she was now expecting [2]; as if planning her love child (by designing the house) with Neutra actually conceived a baby.

However, six months later, when the house was almost completed, Josephine had a miscarriage. As it was the house’s main task to enable Josephine to become a mother, the house had failed, meaning that the design of the house wasn’t suited for its purpose and so, ultimately Neutra as the architect and analyst had failed; or at least I expected this to be the conclusion, but to my astonishment it wasn’t. The Chueys did not blame the house, nor the architect in any way, instead both of them “credited the house with bringing joy to their lives, by reducing nervous ailments but most importantly by increasing their creativity.” [2] Neutra’s position in this relationship must have had a God-like character if he was still adored after failing them so deeply. Instead of resenting the house for not giving the setting that would provide her a child, Josephine saw the house as “a compensatory love object and repository of her desire to be productive.” [2]; as if losing her child made her love the house even more.

Neutra was an empathic lover to his clients, through being their analyst, also acting like their nurturing mother. Among great architects and psychoanalysts he felt like their little brother but his own therapy soon turned him into a possible manipulating other.

The Perkins House Neutra’s most intense relationship with a client was most definitely with Constance Perkins, she commissioned Neutra to build her a house in 1954. The intensity of their relationship and its implementation in the design of the house, makes the Perkins House an ideal case to reflect on Neutra as ‘the empathic lover, the analyst and mother, the little brother and the manipulating other’ through the design of the house. Perkins, as an unmarried woman, chose Neutra to commission a house the same way she would have picked a husband: “by going to him and

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finding out if there’s something compatible in the way you [they] both approach this very intricate problem of living.” [2] Their connection was so intense, although never physical, that even after the house was built, they kept seeing each other. Perkins had asked for “a house of therapy” [2] that could help her to overcome childhood traumas, heal previous psychological wounds and to start a new chapter of her life, as if she were to be reborn. Not only for Perkins the house would be an environment leaning itself for constant therapy and self-analyses, but for Neutra as well the house and his contact with Perkins worked as a therapeutic device. “Neutra would stop by to visit her [Perkins or the house] if ‘he was feeling low’.” [4] Resembling a man visiting his love child every now and then to make him feel better about himself.

Perkins wrote a short autobiography through free association, as a part of Neutra’s analysis of her. At the end of it she sums up some of her views: “My home is not just my ‘machine for living’; it is my environment. Living includes thinking and feeling as well as mechanical existence. Living is a way of life. To be full it needs an environment that pricks every sense with which the human being is endowed, an environment that is specifically ordered to give direction to ordered thought.” [4] Creating an environment that demanded thought and self-analysis is exactly what Neutra realised in the mitered glass corner where a spider-leg is shooting out and a mirroring water surface is crawling in. (fig. 1) This living room corner became Perkins’ favourite part of the house as it functioned as her “empathic mirror” [2], the objectification of her empathic relationship with Neutra. As mentioned before, Neutra didn’t surpass the great masters on the level of modernist architecture, but he certainly added a dimension. The dimension that would personalize the standardised modern soulless box, by creating an environment of flowing energies in which the client could fully develop its own identity. As Lavin describes perfectly: “The Perkins house is an empathetic rather than analytic house that attempted to fill the ‘dreaded’ void of modernist space with an overwhelming atmosphere of sensation.” [2] Hence we could argue that Neutra was maybe a far related cousin taking on a different course rather than ‘the little brother’.

The Perkins House had all the features of ‘a typical Neutra’, but due to the close collaboration between Neutra and Perkins, the house was even more romanticised in its interior. It was a perfect match of architecture and nature coming together “in an unusually expressive and beautiful partnership.” [2] As the theory of ‘The Trauma of Birth’ became the foundation of the kind of therapy ‘a Neutra’ would offer through its architecture [2], there is also a relation to be found between the theory and the architectural features of ‘a Neutra’ (spider-legs, reflecting pools, mitered glass corners and overhang roofs).

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The living room, where Perkins spent most of her time, and even slept at night sometimes, really allowed nature to float in through the large glass panels touching in the corner. The corner was designed in a way that the relation between inside and outside became unclear, as if one became an unbound part of the environment of free flowing energies through the space. Here the glass windows are not meant as a picture framing a view as it would be for Le Corbusier and the modernists of ‘The International Style’. [2] For Neutra the windows permitted movement and a becoming one with the surroundings, just as the whole house would be a continuation of the environment, instead of a white modernist box landed as a spaceship on the soil. Hence it becomes clear that Neutra wasn’t a poor imitator of the great modernists, but that he had a clear diverging vision, although often overlooked. The overhang of the roof and the continuation of the materials also enhanced this blurry inside-outside relationship, leaving the client unbound by the limits of the house. On top of that, the overhang of the roof of course created very much appreciated shadow in the hot Californian climate, but also eliminated any reflection on the windows. It is exactly this elimination that causes the windows to become ‘invisible’, as if they weren’t there, leading to full exposure and unboundedness. [2] One might ask, doesn’t this glass corner and the extreme unboundedness of the living space trouble the sense of privacy? Neutra designed exterior lighting that would reverse the opaqueness of the glass at night, allowing you to look out but not in. [4] However, surely not everyone could live as freely flowing in the environment as the house instigated, one of them was Anastasia Clother: “In fact from the inside of a Neutra house, one has the feeling of being outside inside, if you get what I mean. I don’t exactly. That’s my trouble with Neutra. I don’t want to be outside. I don’t want to be one with my neighbors.” [6] There is however a strong contradiction between the publicly exposed living space and the bedroom that stayed very clearly defined, bounded by thickened functional walls and framed windows. Related to his obsession with the maternal body, Neutra suffered from great anxiety about leaving the maternal body and being left alone in isolation. The enclosed and clearly defined bedroom hence resembles the need of feeling secured, not being left alone to wander off in the wide environment, as could be the feeling generated by the unboundedness of the living space. “Attempting thus to balance the various needs of human attachment and disconnection, Neutra directs a complex choreography of psychologically resonant continuity and disjunction.” [2] Interestingly this ‘correlation’ between continuity and disjunction is typically for ‘a Neutra’, also meaning it can be found in (almost) all of Neutra’s designs,

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regardless of the client; showing reason to believe that Neutra wanted to answer to his own ‘needs’ rather than to those of his clients.

The fact that Perkins basically lived and slept in her unbounded living room and that she used the bedroom only for guests, exemplifies that the design of the enclosed bedroom was purely a result of Neutra’s own anxieties and that Perkins herself was clearly less bothered by the need of attachment.

The mirroring water surface acted primarily as a connection with nature and the inside-outside environment, but was of course also a literal device of self-reflection and -analysis. The spiderlegs however do besides “displacing and confusing the location of structure” [7] again reflect ‘The Trauma of Birth’, and help in overcoming it by reliving it through architecture. By being displaced from the house, the spider-legs create an intermediate zone, “a kind of birth canal that mediates the passage from inside to outside”. [2]

Conclusion It is now clear that for Neutra ‘The Trauma of Birth’ and his own anxiety related to it, became the primary narrative for the design of the houses for his clients. Unclear whether his clients expressed this same anxiety or not, Neutra, with his mind interconnected to Rankian theories, believed his houses would universally cure his clients of their personal anxieties; with an impersonal cure.

It is also clear that Neutra thrived on his God-like relationship with his clients who mostly seemed to worship, love, but maybe also fear him. Cherishing their relationship to the extent he did, might have been fed by anxieties of failure and neglection he developed in his younger years from seeing where his ‘fathers’ ended up.

Neutra’s determination to the architectural and therapeutic qualities of ‘a Neutra’ as the ideal ‘house of therapy’ and hence the ideal ‘cure’ expresses a remarkable need to create ‘perfection’.

This is like giving controlled birth to an infant of which you can fully design every single detail.

A need possibly stimulated by the imperfect birth of his own mentally disabled eldest son?

Considering all these elements, we can conclude that Neutra’s choice of profession as a selfproclaimed therapeutic architect possibly had as its main purpose to cure and master his own anxieties. He attempted to cure himself by means of thriving relationships with his clients who often truly felt as if they had been liberated after their architectural-analytical treatment by Neutra.

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Pictures

Figure 1: “Neutra, Perkins House, Pasadena, California, 1955�

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Bibliography [1]

M. Overdijk, “Richard Neutra’s Therapeutic Architecture,” Failed Architecture, 2015.

[2]

S. Lavin, Form Follows Libido, Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts / London, England: MIT Press, 2007.

[3]

R. Neutra, Life and Shape. Los Angeles: Atara Press, 2009.

[4]

A. T. Friedman, “Women and the Making of the Modern House: A Social and Architectural History,” New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2006, pp. 160– 185.

[5]

D. Reisman, “The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character,” New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950, p. 364.

[6]

A. Clother, “Anastasia Just Not Ready for Super Modern Home,” Marion, Indiana Chronicle-Tribune, February 7, 1954.

[7]

S. Lavin, “Open the Box: Richard Neutra and the Psychology of the Domestic Environment,” Assemblage, no. 40, pp. 6–25, 1999.

Additional literature for a comprehensive study of Neutra more specifically directed to the field of architecture: [A]

T. S. Hines, Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture. New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.

[B]

B. Lamprecht, Neutra. Taschen, 2007.

Index of pictures Fig.1 S. Lavin, “Open the Box: Richard Neutra and the Psychology of the Domestic Environment,” Assemblage, no. 40, pp. 6-25, 1999.

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