Matthias Brunner
Between 1921 and 1923, Richard Neutra worked nearly two years for Erich Mendelsohn, just before he left Europe for the United States. When Neutra arrived at Mendelsohn’s office, the Einstein Tower was nearing completion, when he left, the conversion of Mosse’s Tageblatt Building was finished and the Haifa competition was won. This paper explores why and how these two architects were collaborating and what they learned from each other. For this purpose, it traces their biographies, their theories and their built work. Since both Mendelsohn and Neutra were deeply impressed by Frank Lloyd Wright, common traits of their works are not necessarily the result of direct influence, but might also be caused by their analysis of Wright’s works. Therefore, their relationship to Wright is studied as well. Accordingly, its biographical part ends with Mendelsohn’s visit to Taliesin in autumn 1924, where he met Neutra again, now working for Wright.
In August 1922, Neutra was very close from becoming Mendelsohn’s partner, but finally, negotiations failed and Neutra remained Mendelsohn’s employee. Why? Mendelsohn considered Neutra his most important employee and wanted to bind him to his office. On the other hand, Neutra was attracted by the prestige of the position discussed. But none of them was truly interested in shared authorship. Mendelsohn wanted to keep complete control of his designs and Neutra never shared Mendelsohn’s views on architecture entirely. Already in those days, he considered Mendelsohn’s buildings too sculptural and not sufficiently related to the surroundings and to nature. Were these two architects more successful in later attempts of collaboration? How did Mendelsohn get along with Hendrik Wjidefeld and Amédée Ozenfant at the Académie Européenne Méditerranée, how with Serge Chermayeff in England? How was Neutra’s partnership with Rudolph Schindler and later with Robert Alexander?
Neither Neutra nor Mendelsohn openly acknowledged any substantial influence of the other architect. Mendelsohn usually presented himself as somebody creating nearly everything from scratch, Neutra commonly did not mention any other architect except Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Nevertheless, most of Neutra’s projects finished before 1929, for example his Jardinette apartments, seem to refer to Mendelsohn both methodologically and formally. At that time, Neutra mostly started his design process by perspective sketches (instead of floor plan sketches as later) and many of his volumetric compositions and windows recall Mendelsohn. On the other hand, the impact of Wright on Mendelsohn’s designs grew exactly at the time Neutra joined him.
Was this due to Neutra’s influence? While it is certain that Neutra considered Wright the greatest living architect, it is also documented that Mendelson knew Wright already since a long time before they met (at least since 1917), and that many other German architects were studying Wright simultaneously. Therefore, we need to analyze in detail how Mendelsohn and Neutra were reading Wright. Most likely, this will allow us to see clearer whether their interest in Wright is dependent on each other or not.
Matthias Brunner is a lecturer and research associate in the Postwar Modernism Research Laboratory at Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences. After having completed his doctoral dissertation „Essential Sensations. Richard Neutra und das Licht“ at the Institute for History and Theory of Art and Architecture at the Accademia di architettura, Mendrisio, he became a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at the same place. Simultaneously, he was working for the Historic Preservation Office of the Canton of Lucerne. Before, he studied architecture at ETH Zurich and at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, and worked for various architecture firms in Switzerland and Vienna.