"Place Man in relationship to Nature; that's where he developed and where he.
feels most at home!" "Richard Neutra.
A native of Vienna, Austria, Richard Joseph Neutra (1892-1970) had familial ties with the scions of the city's avant-garde community; Ernest Freud, son of the famed psychologist, was a childhood friend, and his parents knew the artist Gustav Klimt and Arnold Schonberg, the famed composer. Richard received his architectural training at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna, where he studied under Adolph Loos (graduating in 1917). His early work experiences included a brief stint in the office of Berlin architect Erich Mendelsohn (1921-22), and later, in the United States, with the Chicago firm of Holabird and Roche (1924). This professional training disposed him to design values associated with the machine aesthetic and the potential of technological innovation. Coupled with this perspective was a fascination with natural phenomenon, which was nurtured during brief employment (Summer 1919) at Otto Froebel's nursery and landscape firm located in Zurich. There, Richard came under the tutelage of Gustav Ammann, who encouraged an interest in botany, landscape and site planning, which the designer retained throughout his career. .
The young architect's attraction to the United States was closely linked with his fascination for the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, with whom he briefly worked in Taliesin (1924). He also received considerable encouragement to venture further west from his childhood friend and fellow Austrian architect, R.M. Schindler. In 1925, Richard and his wife, Dioné, moved to Los Angeles. Their arrival further strengthened the region's direct contact with Austrian and Germanic Modernism, which Schindler had initiated since his 1917 arrival in California as supervising architect on Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House. Richard and Dioné moved into the Schindler residence located on Kings Road (now West Hollywood).