Rost Architects Interview Series: Raymond Neutra

In January 2021, I had the pleasure of speaking with Raymond Neutra, the son of renowned mid century modern architect Richard Neutra.

Nearly a decade ago, I visited one of Richard Neutra’s homes in Los Angeles, the VDL House. I was fortunate to tour the home with Raymond. During the tour, Raymond walked me through the home, discussing the floorplan, details, siting, and history of the home. After the tour I sat with Raymond on the roof deck and listen to him tell the story of his fathers career, legacy and impact on the field of architecture.

He went into great depth on his fathers design philosophy, process and interests. It was an experience that changed my approach to design and has helped to shape the design process at our frim Rost Architects.

Raymond was very gracious with his time during the tour. Ten years later he showed the same generosity by attending this interview and picking up the conversation where we left off. In the discussion Raymond goes into great detail on his fathers life, moving to the United States, career progression, mentors, time with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin.

We also spoke about what he felt was his fathers most important contribution to the field of architecture, and what he viewed was his fathers most successful project. We also talked about Richards relationship with renowned Modernist architectural photographer Julius Schumann. I feel incredibly fortunate to hear about Richard from his son who had first hand point of view on his fathers life. Raymond continues to promote and manage the Neutra foundation which supports the legacy of Richard Neutra. To learn more about the foundation visit neutra.org/

If you would like to watch or listen to the conversation, click the video below. We hope you enjoy.

Video Transcript - Rost Architects Interview with Raymond Neutra

*Please note that the video transcription was taken directly from the audio in the interview, there may be errors or omissions inconsistent with the original discussion.

Mitchell  00:00

Today's guest is Raymond Nutra. Raymond earned his bachelor's degree from Pomona College. His medical degree from McGill University and both his master's and doctorate from the School of Public Health at Harvard. He then went on to make his career in medicine and environmental epidemiology. He taught at Harvard and UCLA prior to joining the California Department of Public Health to head up the division of environmental and occupational disease control. Raymond is the son of perhaps the most well-known mid-century modern architect Richard J Neutra. Really looking forward to sharing the conversation with you guys. Let's jump right into it. Raymond, I want to welcome you and thank you for taking the time to hop on with us today.

Raymond  00:55

I'm happy to be here.

Mitchell  00:57

I want to start with a little story in 2011. About 10 years ago, I listened to you and my Professor Barton Myers, from my UCLA graduate program, on the roof deck of the VDL house, talk about your father's legacy, his work and your memories of the time you spent at the VDL house. I very strongly remember how captivated I was by the stories and the talk. Let's start off and if you don't mind, I'd like to ask you to give the listeners a bit of a brief introduction on who your father was, his legacy, and his career.

Raymond  01:49

In preparing for this, I decided that I would pull together some photographs. I'm going to share my screen and show you some things to illustrate what I'm going to be telling you. The textbook version of my father is usually limited to images of three residences that he designed during the course of his 14-year career. The first image would be of the Lovell Health House in 1927. Which puts it right at the beginning of the modern movement. It was a very innovative structural with a steel frame and sprayed concrete.  It was called a health house because the client was a natural Pathak doctor. There was a lot of attention to the kind of glass that allowed UV light to come in so that you wouldn't get rickets and would kill off the TB germs. The walls were washable. A very special kitchen for vegetarian food and swimming pool suspended on concrete, cradle and so forth. Then the next image would be of Edgar Kaufman's winter retreat. Edgar Kaufman, in the summer would retreat to Falling Water designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. This would be the evolution of my father's work towards the look that would become mid-century modern with radical relationship to the outdoors and integrating machine aesthetic with nature. Then there would be a mention that he was very interested in brain and psychology. This can be seen in his book Survival Through Design. He was an architect who was interested in integrating nature with prefabrication and industrial design with a big focus on psychology and the psychological impact of design. That's true as far as it goes, but we can talk more about what I think are his bigger impacts than just merely residential design.

Mitchell  04:58

Thank you Raymond, I would call that the Wikipedia version of what your father has done and the legacy that he's left on the architectural community and the profession. Can you walk us through his early career from working in Europe to moving to America working with Frank Lloyd Wright in the Midwest and then eventually transitioning and planting roots out in California? I'm particularly interested in this small stint of time that he had at Taliesin with Wright.

Raymond  05:32

My father was born in 1892, which makes him a few years younger than people like Gropius, and Mendelssohn and a little bit older than the people that we hear most about in the early modern movement. He grew up a turn of the century Vienna when it was still the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was Jewish, but not religious. That made him part of many of the intellectual professions in Vienna. Yet there was a lot of anti semitism. He was an outsider in a way. His family had moved in from Hungary, a generation before like many people in Vienna. There would be Poles, and Czechs, and Hungarians and Slovaks, and Slovenians and Croatians and of course Germans. It was a multicultural place he grew up in. There with a small number of critical thinkers like Sigmund Freud and Arnold Schoenberg, the composer and adults, mostly architects who were looking at the society that they were in seeing how fragile it was and thinking about what a new society could be. He and his slightly older school colleague, Rudolph Schindler used to hang out with Adolph Loos in his cafe, hearing him hold forth. One of the things that Adolph Loos was his time in America where, in the early 1890s, he was in America and he loved the United States. He loved the lack of pretension.

He loved the fact that people that were cutting each other's throats in Europe were getting along together in this new land, and we're willing to try out new things. When they discovered Frank Lloyd Wright from the Wasmuth portfolio, both Schindler and Neutra, were astonished by what they saw that motivated both of them would move to the states. Schindler, when in 1913, my father would have followed what was drafted into World War One and spent four years hauling with horses, artillery pieces through the Balkans. When he got back from the war, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had collapsed. There was no way Switzerland work with a landscape architect. He got very interested in landscape architecture. Then he got to work. He got a job in Vienna again with the Quakers interpreting for them in Vienna. Then a job as a city architect in a suburb of Berlin, where he did housing and in a forest cemetery. Towards the end of that, he got a job with Erich Mendelsohn and worked with him for a few years. As his lead architect, he designed a number of little houses in Vienna, in Berlin on his zone, which had a feature of a room that was on a merry go round, that there were two rooms on the same platform, and you could roll it around and it would be a living room and roll it back again and it was another run. He and Mendelssohn won a contest for a library in Haifa, Israel. With that money, my father finally was able to go to the United States. He worked in New York. Then he worked in Chicago for a Halliburton Roche which was then designing the Palmer House Hotel with many other functions in it.

He had a chance to meet Louis Sullivan on two occasions. Even though he'd been corresponding with Wright for several years trying to get a job. He finally met him face to face at the funeral of Louis Sullivan and was invited to come in work at Tel-yes, in which he did for six months. We'll talk about that a little bit later. I thought he was going to get a number of jobs which fell through in. My father moved on and moved into the King’s Row multifamily complex that Schindler had designed in Los Angeles. They were in a loose partnership together with my father trying to do the commercial work. Schindler continued on his residential work although my dad helped Schindler with some landscape designs and some of his structures. Towards the end of that period one of Schindler's clients gave my father the assignment to do his Lovell Health House which Level kind of looked at it. He'd been working with a partnership. He wanted one of the partners to take the lead on.

My father was very reluctant to take this take this job and convinced Schindler to participate. But then Schindler dropped out and my father completed the work. After that there was the depression and so my father went back to Europe. He lectured about several of the projects that he had done there and taught at the Bauhaus for two weeks and was invited to Holland and met a lot of the Dutch modernists. Then he came back and slowly started doing work through the 30s which picked up. Financially his career really took off after World War II. He had a partnership with Robert Alexander doing schools and civic buildings in international work. He died in 1970. I should say that in the late 30s he revived an interest that he'd had as a student in physiological psychology and the impact of design and started writing essays in the 30s and 40s and finally published them as this book Survival Through Design in 1953.

Mitchell  13:13

Then of those influences that you touched on in his early life, before coming to America, could you say that one had a stronger influence or impact on his later work more than others? Or you feel there's one person in particular that you can see in your fathers work?

Raymond  14:00

I think I need to show you some pictures again to illustrate the influences. All of his mentors were all rebelling against something. Frank Lloyd Wright summarizes it by saying “The building's standing and we're all tall and all tight. Chimneys were lean and taller still. City fingers threatening the sky. Dormers where elaborate devices cunning little buildings complete in themselves stuck to the main roof.”

In the 1890s a number of other people were rebelling against this. Adolph Loos, who was a mentor of him, even wrote an article called Ornament and Crime and said that adorning buildings which was basically what architecture was, was a little bit like tattooing. He said the people with tattoos were either in jail or were about to be jailed. He wanted honest use of materials and celebration of materials but very importantly he interested architects as responsible craftsman, not completely free artists who could do what they please. He was very interested in 3d space. This idea of architect as a responsible person of not adorning efficient use of 3d space my father took on board.

This is an example of one of the closest buildings where you see this beautiful marble in here and unadorned the Miller House in Prague. Frank Lloyd Wright was the biggest influence. I've written a kindle book about Neutra and Frank Lloyd Wight. Wright describe the Lovell Health House that I showed you earlier, as cheap and thin and he made it pejoratively but in fact my father was very interested in being economical.

He discovered Wright through Wasmuth portfolio that came out in Germany, but not in the United States. In it Wright talks about his eight points which I think my father exemplified in all his work. Open plan a horizontal line in relationship to nature exploding the box. No basement. The windows aren't little holes punched in the wall but rather screens. The materials are the ornament and straight lines of the machine. The mechanical systems should be integrated into the design and linear building furniture. As you'll see in subsequent pictures all of that comes through but much more stripped down than in Wright’s work.

Mitchell  17:25

I'm particularly interested in your father's time at Taliesin and with Wright. I know he only spent five to six months there and I know there was correspondence with he and your mother about how enjoyable the time was there. Can you give us some more insight into what his experience there may have been like?

Raymond  18:01

My father's life and Wright’s life intersected at a point which was very low for Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright had, in 1910, left his first wife and children, and gone away with one of his clients to Europe and worked on the Wasmuth portfolio. They came back and some years later and a crazy butler murdered his new wife, her children and several other people. It was a scandalous thing and Wright was still recovering from that. Then he married Miriam Noble. That was a very troubled marriage which was dissolving. Around that time there was hardly any work and for my father he had finally gotten to the United States He was starting to work on a book about American construction and had a little money. He had left his wife, my mother, with her parents because she was pregnant with my oldest brother. My mother came ahead leaving the baby, that was about one year old by that time, with her mother and came through Ellis island. Had to go to a court hearing to see whether she was a suitable immigrant. When she got through that she got on the train and went straight to Taliesin. You can imagine a young couple who hadn't seen each other for a year, going from Ellis Island to Taliesin. A mind-blowing kind of experience and at that time, Wright seemed to have a number of possible jobs. One of them was a building in Death Valley for a man named Johnson and my father worked on that project. Ultimately, that fell through, and Scotties Castle, a Spanish revival. Then Johnson had a skyscraper that he also wanted, Wright to design, which would have been very innovative and interesting. That fell through.

My father also worked on the Freeman house. There was a fellow named Freeze, who is a publisher in Germany that my father knew was interested in publishing Wright's latest work. My father, always a very creative public relations person suggested that rather than having an article, there'll be an entire book devoted to this. He worked hard with Wright who tended to be distracted on putting that together. In fact, a colored reproduction book was published in Germany, about the post 1910 work of Frank Lloyd Wright. Much of them projects which hadn't been built. But probably months, and we're falling through. This is a different Johnson than the Johnson Wax Johnson.  Schindler invited my dad to come and join him in in Los Angeles. The Chases had recently left so there was a vacant apartment there at Kings Road. Wright tried to convince him to stay but they left on good terms. My parents came in and settled with Schindler. The relations continued to be very cordial with Wright. My parents were invited to the marriage of Oleg Ivana and Wright in La Jolla. In fact, my parents were there when Oleg Ivana first appeared at Taliesin and then my mother played the piano for Oleg Ivana to dance in front of the fireplace. It was a cordial relationship. Both my parents were fond and admired.

But my father despite adopting those eight formal points, was not an imitator of the right style. He used them in his own way. When that building was built, and particularly when there was an exhibition in 1932, of the so-called international style that Johnson and Hitchcock put on it, the Museum of Modern Art, Wright was included as sort of a precursor to modernism which angered Wright. That's when he said Neutra’s work have been thin. There was a kind of suspicious relationship between Wright towards my father. On one occasion when he came to visit and my parents put him on the train to go back to Chicago. As the train was pulling out, Wright said to my father, you know Richard, they tell me you are my worst enemy. My father said well, you have to judge that for yourself. I certainly don't feel that way. When I was about six, I think on the way back from Bennington, we stopped off at Italia center. I have memories of that that trip but the last letter was this friendly letter in the record and then Wright returns the letter and says greetings to the clever Richard. There was always as this was the case with Wright. He needed to be acknowledged. For the people who work for him saying that they had no ideas of their own but we're followers of Wright. My parents continued their admiration for what Wright had done and for his genius and that wonderful start and inspiration of his passion for his work.

Mitchell  25:35

I think that relationship with your father and Wright, may have gotten tenuous when Kauffmann hired your father to do his desert house. Wright had previously done Falling Water for Edgar Kauffmann, and he was looking for something different for his desert house.

Raymond  26:06

I think that Wright even had a preliminary drawing for that site. Kaufmann Jr. was working with Wright and was really pushing for Wright to get a job for whatever reason. Kaufman wanted to go with my father. Kaufman was very much involved with the design of the house. There's an unusual feature of two sliding doors that come together in a corner in that house. It was Edward Kaufman. My father writes, Mr. Kaufman wants to have two sliding doors coming together at the corner, without any frames at all. That wasn't technically possible, but the frames were as thin as they could possibly be. Thaddeus Longstreth, who went on to a career of his own and his son, Richard long stretch, a very distinguished architectural historian. He has told his son in an interview towards the end of his life, that his job was to deal with the daily telephone call with Edgar Kaufmann, who was on the site continuously making suggestions, most of which were not really feasible. That was dad's job. To work on that. Kaufman was very much involved with this project, which was characteristic of some of the best jobs that my father did. He enjoyed the constraints, that the clients provided and the challenge for accommodating those. Charles XIM said he never compromised. Gerald Jameson, he never compromised, but he embraced constraints.

Mitchell  28:19

That's an interesting segue to my next question. I know your father was notorious for doing in-depth studies of his client’s daily routines and habits. I know, in a couple of essays, I read that he had asked a particular client to record her daily activities and keep a journal of those activities so that he could take inventory of those and find out which spaces are most important to her daily life. Then design the house around that data or that information. Can you give us some insight on this?

Raymond  29:01

There's a movie about Windshield, the house he designed for Donna Nicholas Brown, which unfortunately, was ultimately burned down, but where some of those details are laid out. There's also a book about that. This was characteristic, particularly for projects where the design was done at a distance. In one case, the brown house in Washington DC he actually spent a day with the young Mrs. Brown and their children seeing what was going on. He was fascinated on how architecture affords possibilities and accommodates what people do. How people socialize. What their psychological experiences are. Also the unnoticed experiences and he felt that you experienced architecture with the eye also with the ear. You smell things. There were many impacts including health impacts as well. All of those things suggested constraints in design so he was very interested in acquiring information about that. Typically when clients were able to come in person. He and the architects in the office, who are likely to be involved in the project, would be together and they would take careful notes about these things. Then when my father was doing the preliminary designs, he would wake up at four in the morning and start designing. Having absorbed all this stuff into the preliminary design. As people became more experienced, he would entrust that task to the senior architects. Then they would send up the designs to him and he would look at them and tweak the designs.

Mitchell  31:56

What do you feel was your father’s design philosophy, or his general approach to design? It seems like he is considering almost the physiological experience of the person experiencing the building more than the form of the building. He's almost viewing it, as a cinematographer or a movie director. Looking at the sequence of how somebody experiences the building. Do you feel that’s accurate and where do you think that came from?

Raymond  32:47

One can see this interest from letters that he's writing to his future wife in the early 20s. He's revealing is enthusiasm for imagining scenarios. There's one letter where he is to entertain himself in designing an apartment for somebody and he invites my mother and her mother to participate in this discussion through letters. My grandmother is suggesting a particular placement of the dining table and then my father says, well that's the upside of that. Then he describes the convenience and the view. He said but you have them on a bench and when the younger daughter gets up to go and get dishes then she's going to disrupt. Everybody will have to get off the bench to do it. But if you have it over here and it goes in another way. Then there are other letters where he describes experiences in coming over the hill and suddenly seeing a tree that's on the other side of the hill starting to emerge as you arrive to the peak.

He describes all the sensations of muscular smell and so forth. There's a inherent kind of both aesthetic sense sensitivity, but also kind of an anthropologist interest in people that are somehow stimulating to him. Whereas some architects would design a strong form and then fit the functions into that form, he seems to be starting with all these constraints which are stimulating to him, then these help him come to a formal resolution of the building. Other than that he's very committed to having this ever stronger relation to the natural elements. I'm sitting in the head of a virtual image of the reunion house, which is one of the buildings that the Neutra Institute is responsible for. It's a house without any dramatic, external view. It's sort of a near garden kind of view. But the main decorative feature is this garden view and the little reflecting pool there in the building is sort of the bass fiddle in a jazz quartet. It's not the main melody. The main melody is the garden. Being a landscape architect as well, as an architect, he's really creating a whole environment. It's not just the building part.

Mitchell  36:50

That brings me to another question that I have. Your father worked in Nursery when he was younger, and had a lot of exposure to landscape. It's obviously that, in his designs, landscape is critical. I know he had some philosophies and perspectives on early human nature and going back to the savanna where our human origins kind of came from. Can you talk a little bit about this and touch on his interest in landscape? How you feel that impacted his legacy? As an architect, I personally think his landscape designs are a key component that made his work so strong. I'm sure some of this came from Wright as well.

Raymond  37:48

He was very attracted to Wright’s similar connection to nature. When he couldn't find any work as an architect, he became an assistant in a nursery, where the landscape architect, I guess, Stephena was also working at the beginning of his career. They formed a friendship. My dad learned a lot about different kinds of plants and their relative ages, what fit together and in so forth. When he did that, for a cemetery a few years later, in looking bald outside of Berlin, he specifies all the plants that had to be planted there, and which ones would have to be replaced 50 years later. He was anticipating the whole lifecycle of how to maintain this for a cemetery, which still exists there and has a few years ago was kind of refurbished. When he arrived in Los Angeles, he did some landscape work at hollyhock house that Schindler was supervising. Then with Schindler’s beach house, in the level health houses. very elaborate specification of all the different kinds of vegetation that would be around as well. The grounds were as important as the house itself. It was a little wading pool where the kids in the school would weigh and athletic equipment and courtyards and places where the kids could be doing some of their educational activities outside.

Mitchell  39:49

In your eyes, what would you say is the most successful project that your father worked on? I know success can be defined in many different ways, but is there a project in particular that stands out in your mind?

Raymond  40:02

There is one that to me poses questions that are still relevant today. That is most interesting because you know that houses like the Kaufmann House, its a topology that is a phenomenon of a particular era, when the richest country in the richest state in the world for a period of about 30 40 years. People were able to afford these standalone houses. Now they still are going on and dwell magazine pays attention to them, but most people do not live in those kinds of places.

 The Neutra VDL studio and residences is not really a house. It has many lessons for us. Particularly at this time in the United States where we have all these homeless people, and in a time when people are old like me and people are concerned about where are we going to end our days. The VDL poses many interesting grappled with questions and they had particular solutions that are thought provoking. It's called VDL because of the man who lent the money to my father to build the home.

He was a theosophist which was a spiritual movement that was worldwide. He was in Holland and was interested particularly in management labor relations. He was also a proponent of modern architecture. He designed the factory for his family business where coffee and tobacco was packaged. He invited my father to Holland in 1930 and in 31 came to Los Angeles. My father was showing what was going on in Los Angeles. At the end of the day asked him where his house was. My father said he didn't have the money to build his own house. He lived in a rented bungalow. He pulled the checkbook out of his pocket and said how much do you need, and my father stammered out number. It was $3,000. The median house cost 8000 in that day and so he built a video house because when I didn't want his name to be used and when he was in Holland, my father saw this kind of Dutch architecture which you can see the relationship to Frank Lloyd Wright. It inspired him to continue in this way. He ended up building the Neutra VDL Studio and Residences built in three phases 30 to 39 and then in 1966 it became a national historic landmark. This is what it looked like the first phase in 1932 with a roof deck up here balconies. It's two stories because the view is across the street to Silver Lake and this is what you would see from that roof deck. Roof deck was a wonderful idea.

In fact it was so impacted by the sun that was rarely used except for me who used to throw dirt clods down on the cars as they went by. Later you know when the house was rebuilt that lesson was learned. There was an enclosed space that you experienced that time with your professor. So it was billed as an experiment and they were 15 page coverage. This little place which was about 1500 square feet and experimental structure in that the module was based on standard steel frames that would fit in the rabbeted into the wood structure. There was stucco on one side and lite wood paneling. On the other there were awnings that came down to control the sun. One side had silvered insulation on the south and were prefabricated trusses that form the foundation. It was a lot for the first time in my dad's work and I think it was an integration of nighttime illumination into the very structure of the building following Wright's idea of mechanical systems would be part of the design and you see how important that light on the outside was in allowing you inside to see what was going on instead of the reflection of the room. Then it was innovative in the way that it used space building. Out to the side is a 60 by 70-foot lot. This is how the neighbor used it in the video extends to the thing and it was not a house but separate houses, each developed to be more or less complete within itself. A couple could live in these two bedrooms. A bachelor could live here, they could share a kitchen. The people on top could get out this door and the people here go down and get out that way. On the bottom floor there was another bedroom and bathroom so two couples could live there. In a place for a couple here with the kitchen and a bathroom that these two couples could share. During the day, a few draftsman here could share it. You can imagine nowadays, couples who are working remotely and in sharing a house, but the traffic pattern is such that these people have separate ways of getting out this whole complex. This is the drafting room. The couples are here using this kitchen and this guy is sleeping in a place that has a curtain and they have access to this second story balcony, which is the trees grew up, came to look like this little dining nook. This thing folds up and there's a sink underneath there to mop the floors.

Here's my grandchildren looking at how it looked in 1939. This unit was built and my parents slept in his living room. I had a little room here and a play room there. On the top floor Frank Wilkinson and his wife and little kid lived as a renter. He went on to start public housing in LA. The office was down here and spinster Lee lived and holds in an office all existing on a 60 by 70 foot lot. This is the metro family as it looked in the late 40s. This is that lower Edu unit. This structure folded up and it was bedding that would roll out and my parents would sleep in there in that space is what it looks like today. I'm looking out at this little patio. This is a tiny little patio but it creates nature in a little space and 65 70 foot lot. Here's Frank and his wife. In 1963, the front unit burned and my brother and my father together, redesigned. But on the same footprint on the same foundation.

This rooftop garden has that structure on the top and there was a reflection pool on the roof. Every level of the house has a little water feature where the ripples in the light are reflecting up on the ceiling. The living room features for relating the kitchen to the living area. The little bedrooms are sort of state rooms and steamship. Everything completely thought through so that there's no wasted space. Looking out at this little pool on the second floor. Once again, the water roof with reflections in a little elevator so that my mother in her later years could get up to that top level. My mother ended her days in that living room that I showed you, being taken care of by a cook in the daytime nurse in a few months before her death. This architectural historian Alexandra Jonas and his wife Leanne came for visit. This elderly person was able to age in place to cite the fact that she had just recently had her leg amputated.

Mitchell  50:09

What's really interesting to me about the VDL House is the concept. Its very similar to an ADU design where it's live/work. With the recent legislation that's come into place in 2019 in California allowing the ADU and allowing the JADU on the properties. I think is really kind of about to change or is changing the pattern of development in the area. Most of the clients that come to us requesting a large custom home are often requesting that they take advantage of the ADU law and that they place an ADU on the property as well. I think to your point it often creates a creative housing solution. Obviously generates more housing. In my mind it creates a more interesting and unique architecture too. We were forced to design the site plan for different areas of privacy like you were mentioning one family living in the ADU can exit or enter the home in one way completely private and then what the other family can enter or exit the structure in one way also completely private. There may be small areas of communal activity whether that's an exterior courtyard or some space in the building. I'm really glad that you brought the VDL house up and I think it's an important thing for not only homeowners to understand but also younger architects to understand that there are more creative housing solutions beyond the single family home that can help solve larger societal issues and also produce interesting architectural results. I think it's a benefit both aesthetically and in a larger societal context.

Raymond  52:26

The video pays a lot of attention to traffic within the structure so that things can go on simultaneously without interfering with each other. This played out in my youth because I was a little kid growing up in a place where there were anywhere from three to nine draftsman working in that drafting space. There were clients in my living room and I could be a kid in this thing without bothering other people because of the way you view traffic and the exit system. This whole complex has 12 exits to the outside so there's a lot of thought to that. Then there's a lot of thought to the life cycle of the people who are in there. My mother came in there in her late 20s and died there at age 89. At that time that she was being taken care of by the nurse. There was a Cal poly professor and his girlfriend who were living in that lower unit and renting it in generating some income. It was possible for frank Wilkinson and his wife to live in those two bedrooms and have the kitchen and have the living room during the day while my father used it as a client interview space at night after dinner. There's a lot of attention there to make if you did a time lapse photography of who was where in this space it's extremely complex. When taking people around, people say well where was your room? Well my room was at least four different locations depending on who else was living in the house at that time. The imagination of the time lapse photography over 50 years is what the architect is trying to anticipate and accommodate.

Mitchell  54:58

That makes me think about the recently sent article about you, your father and Loos and how you felt that Loos instilled or provoked the idea in your father to question societal norms and to question regularities that are just kind of implemented because of tradition. This is a perfect example of how your father carried that philosophy out in his work, which is fascinating to me.

Raymond  55:39

That minority of group in turn of the century Ghana, who were starting to criticize and think how else could we live? Just carried through that, you can imagine doing something quite different. That was something that he valued and was inspired by. Was full of imagination, also about alternative ways of how we could do things.

Mitchell  56:16

As we kind of wind down, what do you feel is your father's most significant impact, and lasting impact on the practice of architecture?

Raymond  56:28

There's several of them in terms of what things were influenced in a positive way by what he did. I have some pictures to maybe illustrate some of this. While the textbook emphasize the residences, my father always was interested in what he called architecture of social concern. I think he had a big influence on the way people design schools. This started with a theoretical project in 1926 of a prefabricated ring plan School, which would have a indoor outdoor pattern of space with a door that folded up to allow all kinds of instructional activities of Dubai learning kind of things, bilateral illumination, and clerestory illumination. It turns out that the level health house itself was a school in house in one this is 93-year-old happy level. The last surviving student of that school Lia level, was a trained educator from a student of John Dewey, and believed by learning and by doing. There are all kinds of home movies of the little kids weaving in basket weaving and doing athletic things around the gardens that my father designed. In 1936, 10 years after he first started thinking about this, he was finally able to do a demonstration school, the corona Avenue school with sliding doors and gardens. A few years later, on the island of Puerto Rico, he designed standardized schools that are still there.

That were published in Brazilian. A book that was published all over South America with images like this of reinforced concrete structures. In Mexico, the architect Artigues was influenced by that. You can see these standardized schools all over rural Mexico. This is the UCLA laboratory school with indoor outdoor instruction. My father designed eight of these schools, but this became a pattern of school design that was different than the little brick schoolhouse all over the world really. Then he had a tremendous impact as a propagandist and networker. He really knew everybody who was in the architectural field. Starting with this book that he wrote in 1927, how America and Bill's describing this for Japan and South America and Europe, the American way of building and then 12 books that he wrote. He also travelled and lectured everywhere in 1946. He was sent by the State Department to South America, and he came upon this building by the architect Hardoi Bruce Iris with these wooden sun louvers.

He wrote article about it and then incorporated it both for wind and sun at the California desert house. With his Los Angeles Hall of Records a movable way of adjusting some control. He also use these integrated into the design of the building rather than tacked on these crank up awnings to control *inaudible*. Then he was very interested in low-cost housing and prefabrication and apartments. He wanted to focus on the clientele that used to live in these slums. Here is a steel in plywood demonstration house from the early mid-30s. A whole community outside of Dallas, Texas have prefabricated houses with separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic as was also the case of housing for dock workers in San Pedro with furniture that he designed that they could build themselves. This really didn't take in the United States the only people who get prefabricated houses are the rural poor. But my dad continued with military housing and in Europe designed to Eichler like communities for lower middle-class people with houses like this. Then the apartment started in 1926 with this reinforced concrete balcony apartments in Hollywood. These apartments in Westwood, that's now a co-op of student housing, the Strathmore apartments in 1937 with balconies, Kelton apartments 42 with large outside balconies, so even in apartment living, you can have this kind of closeness to nature. The other impact was that a number of the alumni of his office went on to head architectural schools Harwell Harris, Gregory Ain, Joseph Allen Stein. He recommended for a job in Calcutta who had a big career in India. Eric Schneider wrestling went back to Munich and was professor and then of course, my brother Dion, who continued the practice with this beautiful library in Huntington Beach and this house for the cartoonists, Lou Shimer. We've talked about the influences, but I think those are the impacts that go beyond the purely formal thing that shows up in the art histories that deal with architecture.

Mitchell  1:03:02

Raymond, if people want to get in contact with you, or reach out to the Institute, can you let them know where they can find you at?

Raymond  1:03:09

In 1961, my father started a nonprofit Nigeria Institute for survival through design, which has this website www.nitre.org, where you can get my contact information. The vision about what we want to see is surviving and thriving in the climate crisis through well researched designs that serve humanity and the planet. Mission one, which was the original mission was fostering those who research and design responsibly. There's plenty of support for beautiful architecture, but not as much attention to researching about what works and why. About the people who are doing designs other than luxurious houses or iconic public buildings, a whole topology of hospitals, clinics, schools, libraries, public park spaces and so forth. We want to foster those who are figuring out what works in that domain and celebrating them. Then the second mission is advancing stewardship and supporting the interpretation of the nitre legacy.

My brother Dion has left us three nitrile design structures in the Silver Lake District, all of them that have at us or apartments in them. We want to relate to the VDL which is down the street, which is owned by Cal Poly Pomona with whom we cooperate. It's within the so-called nitre colony of 11 maître designed buildings. But there's also 15 different archives around the world that scholars use. We want to be supportive to the nitre clients that are trying to restore their properties by featuring successful examples. Those will be helpful to anybody who hasn't been sun tree or building the thing on a restore. Those are our missions. In the legacy is really not just my father, but also my mother who was as much a partner to him as Elaine Solomon was to eliel Saarinen or re Ames was with Charles Eames. She was the one that kept the whole network around the world with people in a number of interesting and active women and in their respective careers and of course, my brother, Dean, I'm sitting there, I'm a little kid, they're sitting next to my dad, and that's my regular for eight years live with us in this part of the household is my father's office director. It's an interesting legacy that we want to be helpful.

Mitchell  1:06:26

Raymond thank you. It was a pleasure speaking with you, and I really appreciate you making the time to have a chat.

Raymond  1:06:32

I'm delighted that you're interested in our story. Thanks so much, Mitchell.

Mitchell  1:06:36

So, thanks for listening to the discussion today. If you'd like to learn more, or if you'd like to contact us, please reach out to us at rostarchitects.com.