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Book: Richard Neutra--The Complete Works
Staff -- Interior Design, 4/4/2002 4:10:00 PM
reviewed by Stanley Abercrombie
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Richard Neutra-The Complete Works |
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New York: Taschen by Barbara Lamprecht 464 pages, 1012 illustrations; $150 Buy at Amazon.com for $150.00. |
| Something we have needed for a long time is a comprehensive monograph on the buildings and interiors of architect Richard Neutra (1892-1970). That lacuna has now been filled. Hoo boy, has that lacuna now been filled! This new Neutra compilation measures 12 ½ by 16 by 2 inches, weighs in at almost 15 pounds, and is bound in wood. Wood? A curious choice, you may think, for an architect whose work is not remembered for its use of wood; when Neutra did use wood, in fact, he often hid it with silver paint. A wood book cover might be perfect for Aalto, an aluminum or stainless one more appropriate for Neutra. In any case4, the sturdy binding serves well to keep its contents from disintegrating under their own weight. Do those contents justify the container? Yes, absolutely, both in the quality of the work shown and in its presentation. The first 70 pages offer a philosophical overview of Neutra's career and interests, such as relations between architecture and nature, health, and society. The rest of the book presents nearly 300 designs in chronological order, almost all of them built. The survey makes clear that Neutra's most well-known and widely admired work, the Lovell Health House of 1927-29, came right at the beginning of his career; but it also shows that the later work never declined into banality and that Neutra never lost his quite distinctive way. Many beautiful photographs take full advantage of the large horizontal format; the majority of these are by the noted photographer Julius Shulman, who also supplied an epilogue, and a surprising number of them include a glimpse of Neutra himself. Floor plans have all been redrawn in a manner that has the virtue of uniformity but that is rather more schematic than one might consider ideal. The text is in English, German, and French. There is, surprisingly for such an ambitious book, no bibliography, but there is a forward by Neutra's architect son Dion, a year-by-year recapitulation of projects, an index, and a series of very welcome maps showing locations of Neutra buildings. This is a stunning work of scholarship and bookmaking. | |
Interior Design Magazine, March, 2001
Classification: Monograph
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