Mr. and Mrs. Maxime Van Cleef House

Mr. and Mrs. Maxime Van Cleef House

Set on an eccentric lot, the Van Cleefs’ house has a footprint that resembles an isosceles triangle with a hypotenuse that follows the property line setback to maximize square footage. The house also charts the irregular contours of the hill, and numerous shifts in the ground plane led to an ever-changing section. The structure steps gradually down the hill’s incline with three distinct levels culminate in a two-car garage tucked below the northeast terrace and four steps beneath the bedroom wing. Designed for a retired couple with a daughter who frequently visited, the L-shaped house was suited to their lifestyle. The home is made of redwood walls and white stucco balconies, and its shed roof angles outward, a contrast to the kitchen’s walls which are angled inward. Redwood is also used for the tongue-and-groove ceilings inside, which, along with beige carpeting, unify interior spaces. Glass and steel doors, which are supported by Neutra’s standard post-and-beam system, open onto a patio to the northwest, and windows above conform to the pitched slope of the roof. Colorful accents, including red, light green, deep green, and bright yellow paint, enliven the spaces. Homey surfaces disguise the experimental technologies Neutra introduced to the house, including electrically-vibrated Schlueter cement joints, Reynolds heat reflectant aluminum foil-covered felt in the walls and ceiling for insulation, panels of combined diatomaceous earth and terra cotta, an undefined “Resilith,” and “heat mirrors” of laminated glass with metal core.

Adapted from Neutra – Complete Works by Barbara Lamprecht (Taschen, 2000), p. 170.