Richard Neutra

In 1949, when architect Richard Neutra appeared on the cover of Time magazine, the editors asked, "What Will the Neighbors Think?" They were referring to the free-flowing, horizontal spaces emerging out of Neutra's Silver Lake studio. This was radical architecture. It was without ornament, made out of industrial materials, and bold in its sculptural openness.

A good third of the 300 buildings designed by the late Richard Neutra can be found in California, says Dion Neutra, 79, head of the Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design and son of the pioneering Modernist. Eight classic Neutra interiors including Dion's own home, above, will be open for tours, part of an 80th anniversary celebration for the architectural practice of father and son, below.

It all started in 2005, when film producer Mark Gill moved in with screenwriter Hanna Weg and asked, "Honey, can I move the couch?" Little did they know this modest request would lead to a two-year makeover that transformed a nondescript clapboard-and-stucco box to a modern jewel. Weg bought the two-bedroom hillside house in Silver Lake 12 years ago, before she and Gill met and married. She was drawn to it because it felt like a treehouse in the sky, came with a pool and had a separate space below the living quarters that could serve as her office.

Postmodernism began in architecture in the '70s, when it was decreed once and for all that modernism--with its flat-topped, rectangular compositions, resistance to ornamentation and brainy "strategies"--had worn out its welcome. Now it seems that postmodernism is having its own travails. What goes around comes home again. The restraint and focus of the moderns suddenly begins to look appealing after a period of fashionable pluralism. Take the case of Richard Neutra, who died in 1970.

What strikes you first about Richard Neutra's renderings, on view at the Couturier Gallery through Nov. 29, is how tame they seem. Neutra was an internationally acclaimed figure in his time, a star of architecture's radical avant-garde. In 1932, he was one of a handful of architects chosen for the Museum of Modern Art's landmark "International Style" show--the show that launched Modernism in America. Yet these drawings, mostly done from the late '20s through the '60s, seem conventional.

The Richard Neutra -designed Kronish house in Beverly Hills has sold for $12.8 million. In April, the iconic residence came on the market for the first time in more than 30 years, listed at $13,995,000. Named for its original owner, Herbert Kronish, and built in 1954, the house sits at the end of a 250-foot-long driveway on a 2-acre lot. With 6,891 square feet of living space, six bedrooms and 51/2 bathrooms, the contemporary home is the Modernist architect's largest in Southern California, according to his son, Dion Neutra.

Attention, hedge funders, oligarchs, princes and billionaire kids who own private jets. Here's a deal only for you. The Kronish House at 9439 Sunset Blvd., Beverly Hills, is now for sale for about $14 million. In the spirit of full disclosure, the bad news first. The Modernist villa is cramped for your taste, just under 7,000 square feet. Six bedrooms, 5 1/2 baths. No room for servants. And it's old and neglected, built in 1955 for a local developer, Herbert J. Kronish. Some call it understated and classic.

Moshe Safdie has been named the 1993 recipient of the Richard J. Neutra Award for Professional Excellence by the College of Environmental Design at Cal Poly Pomona. The award is presented for an outstanding career in education and the environmental design professions.