Mr. and Mrs. John B. Nesbitt House

Mr. and Mrs. John B. Nesbitt House

Richard Neutra’s design for the Nesbitts’ house won an award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) for successfully integrating urban sophistication and cultural refinement with the contrasting quality of rustic simplicity. The house has an intimate relationship with the garden around it, first evident as the visitor arrives on a long, brick path which redirects their attention away from the suburban street and towards a controlled paradise. By angling the path away from the garage, the visitor is led past a closed façade with wide overhangs providing shelter from the sun to the more open and welcoming entrance, complete with glass walls. These glass walls are used on both sides of the living room and provide access to the garden beyond, including a lily pond which spans both interior and exterior spaces, continuing beneath the glass wall. Inside, the house is a composition of rich textures, including those of more rustic elements such as exposed beams, redwood board and batten walls, and common brick. This unmortared brick appears on both the vertical plane, in the fireplace, and the horizontal one, in floors both inside and out. A long serpentine brick wall separates the larger house from a building at the northern end of the lot with a studio, bedroom, kitchenette, and two bathrooms which Neutra designed as a space that could be rented out.

Adapted from Neutra – Complete Works by Barbara Lamprecht (Taschen, 2000), p. 165.