Mention of the name Richard Neutra conjures the light-flooded bungalows that characterize the architectural style of the West Coast around Los Angeles. Because he is so closely associated with Los Angeles, it is sometimes overlooked that Neutra’s career actually began in the Berlin-Zehlendorf neighborhood in the early 1920s. And yet these houses in Zehlendorf represent a fascinating phase in Neutra’s work. With their complex color schemes and extravagant interior design, they reveal themselves to be more than just experimental and radically innovative designs. Indeed, these lesser-known buildings already hint at elements that Neutra would take up again in his future projects.

Richard Neutra in Berlin allows for a long-overdue, rightful reassessment of Neutra’s early works. Alongside historical sources, it collects countless new and unpublished documents about the houses and their first residents.

Austrian-born architect Richard Neutra (1892–1970) finished his architectural studies in the midst of the First World War, and worked in Switzerland and Germany for a few years before moving to the United States in 1923. Settling in California after working briefly for Frank Lloyd Wright, Neutra became identified with a West Coast variant on mid-century modern architecture: rigorously geometric buildings designed in the International Style of Neutra’s European training, with an open, airy, flexible atmosphere suitable to Neutra’s new California home.