TUGAS STATEMENT TOKOH ARSITEKTUR

Disusun untuk memenuhi Tugas Mata Kuliah Teori Perkembangan Arsitektur 2 Semester IV

RICHARD J. NEUTRA (18921970)

Disusun Oleh:

MOCHAMMAD ARIF BUDIANTO

(11.431.00.563)

JURUSAN ARSITEKTUR FAKULTAS TEKNIK

UNIVERSITAS 17 AGUSTUS 1945
SEMARANG
2013

1. "Breakfast with Beverly" Interview with Dion Neutra

San Francisco Design Center

January 19, 2001
Interview by Beverly Russell, editor-at-large for Interiors & Sources magazine and host
of Breakfast with Beverly, the first Internet video talk show devoted to the architecture
and design industry.
Beverly Russell (BR): You've told me the theme for your firm is MAN IN
RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE; can you expound on that?
Dion Neutra (DN): Man grew up in central Africa in nature for his first two million
years; that what we're used to. It's only been 20,000 years that we figured out how to
build shelters, and 200 years since we've learned to enclose and climate control them.
For the most part we've been going downhill since then, putting people into windowless
offices, basements and cheerless environments with minimal openings in the name of
energy conservation. Our practice espouses maximum exposure to the drama of nature,
with much higher percentages of glass than allowable under today's codes.
BR: Our subject is 'green architecture.' How 'green' is our country?
DN: Not as green as it should be. Others in Europe are ahead. Worldwide, we are on a
crisis trip. Alternate fuel research and development incentives have been largely
supplanted by emphasis on "finding the last drop of it" and burning it!.......The Bush
regime may bode badly for the causes of the environment. Under his new Interior
Secretary, they may seek to reverse the last actions of the Clinton administration to
preserve wilderness or the coastline against drilling and logging. The world's
environment doesn't know about states' rights.
BR: What would you advocate to change the course of priorities?
DN: Focus on the bigger picture. We've got to stop thinking about what is expedient for
business to turn a profit. Look at what deregulation has done for the California electric
suppliers. The almighty dollar must yield in the name of a national comprehensive
energy policy addressing the power needs of ALL of our country by region, if not the
world. As designers, we can point the way to preservation of nature as well as the built
environment. Let's hope there are enough voices in Congress to neutralize the expected
repressive efforts of conservatism.
BR: In your introduction to the 30th anniversary collector's edition of your
father's book Survival by Design, you talk about the need for a comprehensive
world view rather than short-term thinking. How can architects and designers
influence this comprehensive world view?
DN: Architects and designers are in a position to demonstrate new approaches to design
and building. The principles of the Case Study houses in California and the architects of
that generation -- of which my father was one -- are still not fully appreciated for their
major programmatic elements: the quality and responsiveness of the built design to the

living environment and nature... Contemporary students could well revisit these
programs to discover their message, as well as devise their own versions of these issues
translated into today's challenges and issues.
BR: Explain what your father meant by 'biorealism.'
DN: My father was a lonely advocate for the application of the insights of the biological
and behavioral sciences to the problems of architecture, as opposed to always deferring
to 'the bottom line.' This is what he called 'biorealism' [see this site's Aims and Purposes
for more information]. To give an example, a spacecraft like the Endeavor can only
accommodate a small segment of the spectrum of human behavior, but through design
of this complex vehicle, and the observations of human interactions in a weightless
environment, much can be learned of relevance to our everyday environments, not to
speak of those who will soon spend weeks in the new space station.
BR: Frank Lloyd Wright was called an organic architect. He was reputed to have
strived to make the natural environment part of his architecture. He was designing
houses in California in the 1920s; did he influence your father?
DN: My father paid homage to Frank Lloyd Wright in his book Survival Through
Design...still in print; in fact, Dad named his first-born after Wright. RJN [Richard
Neutra] was an architect who exploited all the senses, and was aware of their possible
interactions with the environment he created for clients. Aside from their common
philosophy of relating their works to nature, I see no specific influence that Wright had
on Neutra.
BR: What is the best education for an architect or designer today?
DN: A combination of higher technical education with an appreciation of the liberal
arts, as well as the engineering and design aspects of design training. This, coupled with
practical applications such as CAD and other skills honed for use in summer
apprenticeships, might well be the ideal kind of training all would-be architects or
designers should undergo. A summer or two of study-travel abroad would be a desirable
enrichment as well.
BR: What advice would give a young student starting out in the profession today?
DN: Accept the notion that the design professions are among the lowest paid of all. Gain
some actual field experience somehow in an designer's office. You will get practical
exposure to what it's like in a professional office; what sorts of things happen there;
what are the challenges of this profession!
BR: What 'green' architect or designer do you most admire?
DN: I'm not up on specific names; I have admired Lord Norman Foster's work where he
tries to address related issues; there are many now focusing on this. I admire their
inventiveness and energy to use many related technologies. It's definitely the buzz word
of the era; long overdue, I might add.

BR: Who have been your most important mentors, in your career and in your life?
DN: My dad, of course. Several of the draftsmen with whom I came in contact early on
were impressive to me on different levels from the point of view of my development.
An English teacher helped establish my foundation as a writer. My violin teacher taught
me rigor and tenacity, as well as an appreciation of classical music, as did my
grandfather, who was a ruthless disciplinarian from the piano keyboard when we played
trio with my mother. His thing was "Keep time, even if you get lost!"
BR: In looking over your life, what have been the important highpoints?
DN: Living in the [Kings Road] Schindler House, and later the [VDL] Research
Houses. My time in the Navy; at SC and in Europe during my junior year. Juggling
marriages and career early on. A hole-in-one in my one and only time playing golf at St.
Andrews!
BR: Would you change your life in any way, if you could?
DN: I would have liked to have the wisdom of age earlier on, to perhaps have figured
out how to preserve my first marriage and save my sons the trauma of divorce. To have
had the wisdom and resources to save my third wife from death from lung cancer.
BR: Who are the pioneers in the field that you really respect?
DN: I like the sound of [Adolph] Loos from what I've read and heard. My dad had great
depth, and his philosophy in approaching his solutions is still awesome to me. I have
immense admiration for those practitioners who can convince their clients to go along
with bizarre or 'far-out' solutions to what would seem to be relatively simple programs.
BR: What word do you prefer in the English language?
DN:
What
is
that
long
Supercalifragelisticexpialidocious?

word

used

in

'Mary

Poppins,"

BR: What sounds mean the most to you?

DN: I love the sound of a great Bach suite on the cello or violin. Mozart selections are a
close second.
BR: Aside from the new blockbuster book just published by Taschen [Neutra:
Complete Works], including 300 of your firm's works, how can the general public
experience this architecture?
DN: Visit houses, projects, tours, exhibitions, other books, publications... and our Web
site at www.neutra.org. You can purchase the Taschen book or others we feature in our
site's bookstore.

BR: How difficult is it to maintain this legacy? Do the buildings require repairs?
How can they be prevented from inappropriate remodelings?
DN: They do require maintenance; repairs and loving attention with an eye for the
original intent of the design. Too often people acquire these projects and subject them to
a personal view of 'What the Neutras would have wanted.' Would you retouch your
Picasso to match your personal taste or decor?
Sumber: http://www.neutra.org/beverly.html 11/4/2013 10.21

2.

Richard Neutra Quotes

I am an eyewitness to the ways in which people relate to themselves and to each other,
and my work is a way of scooping and ladling that experience.
Sumber: http://www.searchquotes.com/quotes/author/Richard_Neutra/ 4/11/2013

In 1955, Neutra wrote a letter describing his ideas for the building to the distinguished
Modern architect Pietro Belluschi. Belluschi was not only the dean of the School of
Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but more pertinent to any
embassy project had just been appointed to the newly formed Architectural Advisory
Committee (AAC), established in January 1954. The AAC, replete with architectural
stars and American Institute of Architect Gold Medal winners and headed by a former
Foreign Service officer, had been created in response to a growing Congressional alarm
over the so-called international style of architecture used for important buildings
abroad. In his letter, Neutra used a voice one would use only among confidantes and
peers:
The building is sited in the green triangle of Karachi where the bend in Victoria
Road occurs between the entrances to the Sind Club garden and the Governors
Palace, in the midst of the chlorophyll of foliage masses. We have added to the
triangle the landscaped bay which reaches westward from the open space under the
Ambassadorial wing and can be seen beyond the reflection pool. Water and foliage,
greenery and shade, as here under the building, are rare in the desert of the
southwest Pakistan coast The scheme is a more clearly longitudinal one with a
locomotive pulling it toward the triangle and a fortissimo enrichment of golden
detail at the porte-cochere, projected far beyond the reflection pool, and above it the
large green glare-proof glass of the stack of reception lobbies. On the north side,
louvers [also gold-anodized], which I used early in the game [as early as 1947 with
the Kaufmann Desert House.]
Rather disingenuously, given Alexanders frustrations with the barrel vaults, Neutra tells
Belluschi who as a member of the AAC has some power over the design that he
was inspired by the motif he saw elsewhere in south Asia with its rhythmically rolling

one-story gables. Then he gets more honest again: There is practically no pleasant
solution on the west front. All windows are a thermal nuisance and noo matter what we
do the outlook is dismal. No embellishment of the yard will help the sun will glare,
and the best is to consider shaded narrow strips of openings here, in the direction of the
Arabian Sea breezes. I wish the sea were close and visible
To be a little more specific, the fortissimo enrichment is the dramatic if not
downright gaudy entrance. It comprised an elongated porte-cochere of seven large
gold anodized aluminum beams with a thin metal roof, supported by seven steel cables
aligned with the seven gold anodized aluminum vertical ribs dividing six full-height
sections of glass windows.
In Nature Near, Neutra described his experience in Bangladesh that speaks to his
curiosity.
As I usually do in such cases, whether I travel in Peru or Kenya, I began by sitting
on the ground. I laid some color crayons beside me on the grass, put a big sketch pad
on my knees, and proceeded to draw some scenes along the Brahmaputra, including
the grinning inquisitive faces of the boys and girls who crowded around me. It is
amazing what you can learn in such situations from facial expressions and
spontaneous gestures.
Sumber: http://barbaralamprecht.com/2012/06/23/the-obsolescence-of-optimism-neutraand-alexanders-u-s-embassy-karachi-pakistan/ 12/4/2013

Design in the Nuclear Age

When Richard Neutra published Survival Through Design in 1954 he intended the title
to be taken literally. Mankind risked sudden annihilation unless it came to grips with the
alternately liberating and devastating effects of architectural design. Survival Through
Design catalogs the horrors of insalubrious waste that surround us and instructs the
reader how the expert designer, by shaping mans most intimate spaces, can heal our
wounds. Indeed, Neutra granted them a decisive role in the future survival of humanity.
He also suggested that most designers were slowly killing their clients.
Neutras concern throughout the book is the health of modern dwellers brains and
nerves (Neutra 1954: 72), which in his view had become diseased. Although the threat
of the atomic bomb seems to haunt every page, Neutra more provocatively suggested
that Americans were being irradiated along with the Japanese, only at a slower pace.
With the help of alpha particles and gamma rays, we can influence even the innermost
chromosomatic base of the species and cause heretofore unheard-of mutations, he
explained (82). Although the atomic bomb had popularized spectacular dangers of this
kind, there are many less conspicuous ones, he solemnly observed (83). Ultra-violet
light, although seemingly harmless, worked on ones nervous system like an atom
bomb exploding over a long, sustained period of time. Bad design was analogous to the
saturation bombing of Vietnam he later suggested (Neutra 1989: 142). But Neutras

worry was less with the consequences of ultra-violet light (something that could
conceivably be measured) than with the less measurable consequences of ones built
environment. Through an infinite number of stimuli, he explained, houses, road
networks, and cities shape and alter the nervous life of the whole community (83). Even
more unsettling was the idea that the survival of the species as a whole was at stake.
Neutra found support for the latter claim in the writings of pre-Darwinian evolutionists.
Despite his constant iteration of his belief in survival of the fittest, at crucial points in
the text he turns to decisively non-Darwinian sources for support. Recent discoveries in
biology, he contends, show that mans inheritable substance itself can be molded.
Design elements affected not only the life of those who used thema relatively
innocuous claimbut the very DNA of its users and their progeny. This new discovery,
Neutra affirmed, added a great deal to the prestige and significance of design (83).[1]
The designer, he reflected, now has an uncanny leverage on mankind jokingly
describing them as a guild of messiahs (Neutra 1989: 54, 101). Indeed, Survival
Through Design is an elaborate defense of the designer and, more importantly, for their
innate gift: sensitivity beyond the capacity of any machine. And the timing of this
defense corresponded precisely with the moment he surrendered his large scale
ambitions to reform society. From his first book Wie baut Amerika? (1927) to Survival
Through Design there is a strong drift away from social models based on universal, but
non-biological principles to a neurasthenic attention to the details of individual body
chemistry.
Consider, for instance, a striking passage in chapter 10 of Survival Through Design
which is devoted to an analysis of the super-subtle effects of technological processes on
the nervous system. Surprisingly, Neutras stress throughout the chapter and the book
more generally is not at all on the social effects of road networks and urban planning,
which are scarcely mentioned, and not even on the construction of domestic
architecture. Rather, he focuses almost exclusively on the permeation of virtually
untraceable technological processes into the microbiology of ones daily existence.
There are numerous threats in those unheeded by-products of human invention, he
observes (84). The most dangerous threats to humanitys existence lie not in the social
fabric at large, but in the smallest dose of ill-conceived design, what he describes as
the multitudinous microdosages of stimuli (Neutra 1989: 60). Obscure, seemingly
insignificant elements, he repeatedly affirms, may produce disastrous effects if given
sufficient time (86). Ordinary soot in chimneys, hydrocarbons from kerosene lamps,
and microfibers dislodged from wood are just a few of more than two hundred known
carcinogenic substances that suffuse the entire urban surroundings of our age (84).
Neutra argues that we are being assaulted by our environment at every turn and that
humanity is suffering under an avalanche of unasserted so-called progress. That this
regress is unassertedthere is no dictator or overt enemy presence commanding us
only makes its danger all the more deadly.
Neutras larger claim is that postwar mans biology has undergone a transformation that
blunts the sensation of acute but low degree forms of suffering. Even harsh neon signs
as we quickly pass them on the freeway are literally nerve-wrecking to us, whether we
know it or not (85). Neutra is not concerned with the flagrant external effect of these
signs on the retina, but insists there are more decisive internal factors involved.

Although the overt physiological impact of neon signs is minimal, there are lingering
effects of harsh color combinations that slowly and devastatingly deplete mans physical
and mental reserves.
Chapter 21 is devoted to a peculiar analysis of the not consciously recorded but
nevertheless inexhaustible effects of odors and tactile sensations on the nervous
system (146). Neutras concern here is specifically the subconscious physiological
effects of integral exhalations produced by structural and finishing materials. (He
muses on a history of architecture flavored by smells and not by sight [147].) For
example, Neutra makes an extraordinary leap from the primary comfort of a floating
manifold suspension in the uterus to the resilience of hardwood flooring (150). In
Neutras hands, material exhalations link design to the most primordial events of
biological genesis. Neutra suggests that modern subjects prefer hardwood to cement
flooring because the almost imperceptible resilience of wood evokes the sensation of
uterine suspension. Neutra nonetheless cautions the reader not to neglect the benefits of
cement flooring. A more nuanced and precise account of materials, he suggests, would
show that cement flooring is in fact more evocative of primordial suspension than wood
or tile because less body heat is lost through its medium. People may be misguided in
their view of hardwood as more truly connected with prenatal experience, but they are
far from misguided in their belief that that experience orders their taste. The prenatal
experience of shelter, Neutra contends, defines the basis of design and construction.
Space itself, he explains, is a multisensorial product which begins to evolve for us
while we are still in the uterus (156). And again (the idea is key): the sensation of
floating in the evenly warm liquid medium of the mothers womb is a primary factor
molding our later reactions to an outer world (156). What this argument suggests is a
fundamental transformation in Neutras defense of prefabrication. In his prewar writings
Neutra stressed the need for prefabrication for its economic efficiency, environmental
sustainability, and social benefits; in his postwar writings Neutra still makes the case for
prefabrication but now almost entirely on psychoanalytic grounds.[2]
Neutras psychology is decisively un-Freudian in his emphasis on pre-Oedipal notions
of uterine suspension. His model on this account was a widely known text by Freudian
maverick Sandor Ferenczi. In 1923 Ferenczi published Thalassa: A Theory of
Genitality, a bioanalytic treatise, which articulated an extreme vision of the preOedipal conditions of human development. According to Ferenczi, the purpose of
[mans] whole evolutioncan be nothing other than an attempt on the part of the ego
to return to the mothers womb, where there is no painful disharmony between ego and
environment as characterizes existence in the external world (Ferenczi [1923] 1968:
18). Ferenczi imagined that all forms of human practicesex above allaimed at the
genital reestablishment of the intrauterine situation (26). Birth, in this account, was a
catastrophe and sex was an effort to reverse the situation but was doomed only to
repeat it.[3] While the first part of the book describes the ontogenesis of individual life
patterns as one of womb lust and overcoming the catastrophe of birth, the second part
describes the phylogenic parallel that recurs from primordial times until today. It was
Ferenczis idea that
the entire intrauterine existence of the higher mammals were only a replica of the
type of existence which characterized that aboriginal piscine period, and birth itself

nothing but a recapitulation on the part of the individual of the great catastrophe
which at the time of the recession of the ocean forced so many animalsto adapt
themselves to a land existence, above all to renounce gill-breathing and provide
themselves with organs for the respiration of air (45, emphasis in original).
For Ferenczi, birth trauma itself was a repetition of an even more primordial birth
catastrophe, the forced adaptation from an oceanic existence to living on dry land. The
painful renunciation of ones watery environment for habitation on dry land is replayed
within individual psychology in the movement from watery womb to a dry world
outside. Indeed, Neutra saw the desert of Palm Springs and Los Angeles itself as
traumatic locations where he could fashion reparative replays or reversals of the
primordial trauma and thereby provide air for gill-choked masses.
Neutras fascination with uterine suspension and more generally with neonatal
development led him to imagine the pregnant mother as the ur-designer. The expectant
mother holds many lessons for the expectant architect, he declared in his late study of
Nurturing Individuality (Neutra 1989: 39). Mothers are great designers because they
bear an innate gift forsense-conscious surroundings (40). He continues:
In many respects, the expectant mother is the most sensitive and active of organic
beings. The mere potentiality of becoming a mother has endowed females with
qualities, emotions, and insights that not even the best male obstetricians can fully
understand. Particularly during the later stages of pregnancy, mothers instinctively sense
the individualized temperament of their offspring. In effect, they know their children
before they are born, and can even distinguish them from the others she has carried (39).
Designers are like mothers in their capacity to know how their childrentheir
buildingswill turn out. Moreover, designers should strive to replicate the experience
of birthing, its trauma and joy, narratively through their structures.
Sumber:

http://www.designstudiesforum.org/journal-articles/danger-in-the-smallestdose-richard-neutras-design-theory/ 11/4/2013:10.21

When Time magazine put Richard J. Neutra on the cover of its August 15, 1949, issue,
the Austrian-born architect had been designing astounding modernist houses for more
than 20 yearshouses, Time said, with broad, glassy brows and spaciousness and
compactness combined. Neutra (18921970) was a prophet of clean, crisp modernism,
and his houses, most of which were built in California, have inspired countless
architects and emboldened preservationists in an area of the country notoriously quick
to raze landmarks. And why not? As Time eloquently observed, Their beauty, like that
of any sea shell, is more than skin-deeppractical, not pretentious.
Sumber: http://www.architecturaldigest.com/architecture/2011 04/richard_neutra_article
4/11/2013 12.45

3. KARYA

(Jardinette Apartments (Richard Neutra), Hollywood)

Sumber:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/Jardinette_Apartments_
%28Richard_Neutra%29%2C_Hollywood.JPG/320px-Jardinette_Apartments_
%28Richard_Neutra%29%2C_Hollywood.JPG 12/4/2013 15.00

(Kelton Apartments (Westwood))

Sumber:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/69/Kelton_Apartments_

%28Westwood%29.jpg/320px-Kelton_Apartments_%28Westwood%29.jpg 12/4/2013
15.03

(Kaufman House Palm Springs)

Sumber: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kaufman_House_Palm_Springs.jpg
12/4/2013

(Neutra Treetops)

Sumber:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/95/Neutra_treetops.JPG/320p
x-Neutra_treetops.JPG 12/4/2013 15.19

(Garden Grove Drive In Church At Night)

Sumber: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/6207GardenGroveDriveInChurchAtNight.jpg/320px-6207GardenGroveDriveInChurchAtNight.jpg 12/4/2013 15.11