What We’re Doing

This fall, Raymond R. Neutra, President of the NISTD, will be a speaker at the annual Academy for Neuroscience in Architecture (ANFA) conference in San Diego. Neutra will discuss Richard J. Neutra’s ideas about biorealism and the upcoming reissue of his father’s book, Survival Through Design, as an essential text for today’s designers and architects.

In summer of 2023, the Getty Conservation Institute selected Reunion House for the case study for its “Conserving Modern Architecture” course. Twenty-seven mid-career preservation professionals from 26 countries documented the house and used the Neutra Office building as their home base for lectures, workshops, and breakout sessions for collaboration on their group projects.

The Neutra Institute is collaborating with Kris Mun, architect and Director at SenseLAB.  She using eye-tracking technology to show how viewers of a famous Neutra bedroom at Reunion House visually explore the space and its amazing architectural element, the Spider Leg. The results of this study will be presented at an international architecture/neuroscience conference in Fall 2023.

In June of 2022, the Institute was featured at the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) annual conference in Greenville, South Carolina at an event entitled “How Richard J. Neutra’s Survival Through Design Foresaw Health In All Design.” Panel presenters included James A. Wise, Environmental/Design Psychologist; Neutra scholar Barbara Lamprecht, Ph.D.; and Lisa Heschong, architect and author.

Richard Neutra was also the topic of three Fresh Brew seminars conducted by the AIA San Francisco in collaboration with the Center for Architecture + Design. The series explored the connection between Neutra and Frank Lloyd Wright, Neutra’s prescient quest for architectural wellbeing, and Neutra’s architecture of social concern featuring his prefabricated community, Avion Village (1941, Richard J. Neutra).

In spring of 2022, USC’s Methods and Materials class from the Heritage Conservation Program used Reunion House for their semester project in which all historic materials and systems were documented and treatment recommendations were provided. The class was also the topic of the award- winning preservation podcast, SaveAs.