Richard Neutra

Richard Neutra was known for the attention he gave to defining the real needs of his clients, regardless of the size of the project, in contrast to other architects eager to impose their artistic vision on a client.

Neutra sometimes used detailed questionnaires to discover his client’s needs, much to their surprise. His domestic architecture was a blend of art, landscape, and practical comfort.

A building can be designed to satisfy by the month with the regularity of the provider. Or it can give satisfaction in a very different way, by the moment, the fraction of a second, with the thrill of a lover

Richard Neutra

Richard Neutra

Neutra had a sharp sense of irony. In his autobiography, Life and Shape, he included a playful anecdote about an anonymous movie producer-client who electrified the moat around the house that Neutra designed for him and had his Persian butler fish out the bodies in the morning and dispose of them in a specially designed incinerator.

The architect who really designs for a human being has to know a great deal more than just the Five Canons of Vitruvius.

Richard Neutra