Mona Hofmann House

Mona Hofmann House

Located in the San Francisco suburb of Hillsborough, Mona Hofmann’s house is composed of a stack of stepped-back cubes. White stucco is complemented by the ribbons of silver-painted steel casement windows. Inside, Richard Neutra fashioned a triple-height gallery for the staircase. He established a contrast between the darkly varnished, glossy wood and the plaster which was painted in the softer hues of silver gray, jade green, and white. Neutra’s client, Mona Hofmann, was a psychoanalyst, and her exchanges with Neutra explore her opinions about functionalism which she believed could save marriages by eliminating daily irritants. For her, this functionalism meant the opportunity be both a better mother and a better painter. The design recalls Neutra’s other early work in Southern California, and it received an award in a national, House Beautiful competition.

Adapted from Neutra – Complete Works by Barbara Lamprecht (Taschen, 2000), p. 126.