Beckstrand Medical Clinic

Beckstrand Medical Clinic

The Beckstrands were close friends as well as good clients of Richard Neutra, making three commissions over the course of 15 years. Neutra designed the medical clinic after the Beckstrands’ house, and his plans were equally as detailed, as evidenced by the charts he used to specify the colors for the walls and ceilings of each room. The two-story structure’s façade had shifting planes of shiny aluminum and “Koolscreen,” an aluminum mesh, making it simultaneously disciplined and ethereal in character.  While these materials gave the façade a horizontal thrust, window mullions and metal-clad columns served as a vertical counterbalance. Inside, Neutra designed consultation rooms that were to be “cheerful and visually well-defined.” Furniture was purpose-built for the space, including a cantilever sofa upholstered in black leather-like “Bark,” chrome-plated steel chairs, and a birch oblong table, made to the client’s request.

Adapted from Neutra – Complete Works by Barbara Lamprecht (Taschen, 2000), p. 259.