Of all the modern American houses from the first half of the twentieth century probably the most familiar are Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie house and his Falling Water. But, after these, Richard Neutra’s house for Dr. Philip Lovell in the Los Angeles hills is probably best known. With its paper-thin, white walls, extravagantly punctuated with metal-framed glass, it strikingly epitomizes what is now frequently referred to as the “heroic” moment in modern architecture.
In the recent exhibition of Neutra’s architecture at the Museum of Modern Art, organized by Arthur Drexler and Thomas Hines and timed to coincide with the publication of Hines’s splendid, full-scale study of Neutra’s career,[1] grainy blow-ups of the original photographs of the Lovell house suggest with special intensity its effect at the time. They show the house when it stood isolated on its still almost uninhabited, precipitous desert hillside above Hollywood. There was no lush foliage then to ease it into its surroundings, just coarse scrub and bare sandy ground.
The hardness of the setting complemented the sinewy means by which Neutra made the house. Appropriately so, because a vigorous client called it into being. In true California style, Dr. Lovell specialized in the curative powers of exercise and natural foods. Gymnasia were essential aspects of both his house and office (also by Neutra). In his daily column for The Los Angeles Times, Dr. Lovell publicized its exercise equipment, its swimming pool, its sleeping porches, its glass walls and terracing. Upon
