Van der Leeuw Research House

Van der Leeuw Research House

With the patronage of Dutch industrial Kees van der Leeuw, Richard Neutra transformed what was to be his family’s new home into something much larger, a spatial and technological investigation into design. Like other case study houses, the space was a laboratory, and it modeled a live-work balance. Set on a sloping plot of land in Silver Lake, a Los Angeles neighborhood designated after its reservoir, the Van der Leeuw Research House became a base for Neutra and other Los Angeles modernist architects, including Gregory Ain, H. H. Harris, and Raphael Soriano, whose architectural projects can be seen nearby. At the heart of the compound was the original H-shaped complex. The building had two entries, one to Neutra’s office and studio and the other to the family wing. In 1932, for this first building, Neutra had cleverly interpreted the building codes which allowed him to build out nearly to the sidewalk. Structures on the property expanded and were reconfigured fluidly over the years, reaching from the front to the rear street. (Although it was imagined as a guesthouse, Neutra presented the rear structure as a garage to the Building Department to receive necessary permits.)  Like a true experiment, the house was adapted to the changing conditions over time, and interior features, such as the lighting, furniture, and wall surfaces were altered. As the space changed, the house came to feel much larger than its 2,300 square feet. Different volumes were interconnected, and the intervening outdoor spaces between structures were also understood as rooms. The building had the same elasticity as a kit home, and it conformed to the needs of different groups from family members to music groups to draftsmen. Among the many spaces in this house and surrounding it were a kitchen and dining room, a bedroom wing, a maid’s room, a laundry room, an indoor play area, a children’s playground, rooftop terraces and garden courts, and a basement workroom. When Richard and Dione Neutra were traveling in Europe, the building, which was framed in wood, burned. Rising from the ashes, a second VDL house was rebuilt on the same footprint.

Adapted from Neutra – Complete Works by Barbara Lamprecht (Taschen, 2000), p. 98.