Since he followed it all of his life, Richard Neutra (1892-1970)
must have relished the maxim of the Greek philosopher Socrates:
"The unexamined life is not worth living." In his books, articles,
lectures, correspondence, and even casual conversations, Neutra
constantly examined, not only his own life, but the lives of others
- present and past - and the human and natural world they
inhabited. Nowhere was this truer than in his autobiography "Life
and Shape," first published in 1962, which now, after years of
being out of print, has again happily come back to life.
As opposed to "Survival Through Design" (1954), his superb
collection of densely philosophical essays, Neutra took a different
tack in "Life and Shape," following a lighter and more deliberately
relaxed approach. It was as if the usually serious and intense
Neutra was giving himself permission to reveal his richly ironic
sense of humor and to probe areas in his personal experience which
he had not examined as closely before. These included hitherto
unrecorded memories of his parents, siblings, and his childhood and
education in imperial Vienna, his numbing experiences as an
Austrian artillery officer in World War I, and the beginnings of
his architectural consciousness in his response to the work of Otto
Wagner, Adolf Loos, Erich Mendelsohn, Louis Sullivan, and Frank
Lloyd Wright.
As in the autobiographies of Sullivan and Wright, "Life and
Shape" concentrates on Neutra's earlier years, both in Europe and
America. While he naturally recounts his memories of such
well-known commissions as the Lovell Health House (1929), his own
Van der Leeuv Research House (1933) and the von Sternberg House
(1935), he also muses on such less famous buildings as the small,
and now virtually forgotten, Mosk House (1933). "Life and Shape"
also confirms Neutra's obsession with the passage of time and his
firm resolution never to waste it.
Like Sullivan and Wright, Neutra eschewed writing a factual
chronicle, and - at the age of 70 - composed instead a meditation
on the aspects of his life and work that seemed, in retrospect, to
be the most interesting and significant. He felt no need to try to
"include everything" but rather to present an honest recounting of
his memory of his life. In writing my own "Richard Neutra and the
Search for Modern Architecture" Oxford University Press, 1982;
Rizzoli Press, 2006], I relied on "Life and Shape" when I wanted an
account of Neutra's experiences told in his own authentic voice.
For future generations of architects, historian, and readers, it is
good to have it back.
- Thomas S. Hines, UCLA Professor Emeritus of History and
Architecture
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