Howard and Lois Bald House

Howard and Lois Bald House

Howard Bald, who was responsible for horses at a neighboring private school, commissioned this small house of barely 1,000 square feet with his wife from Richard Neutra. The exterior’s horizontal redwood siding contrasts with the brush-coated white plaster on the interior. Inside, difference is also achieved between the kitchen’s brown paint layered with a shade of oxblood and the smooth white walls elsewhere in the house. Neutra also used surprising wall colors—here a bluish green—to denote another room’s function as a “green room” for “backstage” activity which might need to occur near the family’s entrance. Curved corners limit the barriers imposed by what would otherwise be tight passageways with the intent of reducing in Neutra’s words “daily irritants that could blow up a marriage, any marriage.” Tall ceilings above the entrance feature clerestory windows that rise into a high cove, however they lower to meet those in the living room. Horizontal lines traced by a fireplace and built-in furniture along one wall in the living room guide the eye past a screened porch to views of the hills beyond.

Adapted from Neutra – Complete Works by Barbara Lamprecht (Taschen, 2000), p. 158.