Inside the forgotten Neutra home in Los Angeles | Home Tour

coming from Hong Kong from a 700 Square ft apartment five people lives in including our Nanny uh with one toilet uh moving to a 3,400 foot was an incredible transition you know you suddenly found yourself open to all the world you know you you sitting in your middle of your living when you have that glass piece and all that Blass animals just come and look at you sometimes you know you feel like in a in all ways and then naturally the landscape change quite radically every day I think it's it's just it's amazing to see how your relationship with nature can be also in a city like Los Angeles you can develop that relationship with nature our firm is called spatial practice it was originally formed in Hong Kong about 15 years ago we do primarily in Asia we're doing larger residential projects uh a lot of art installations uh since coming to Los Angeles about two years ago we've been majorly focusing on single family homes and whatever other inventures we have we were looking for a house to renovate and we went to see several mid century houses around the hills of M Hol drives and uh I got a call from a friend of mine saying that there an off-market house a mid century you should come and see it and I came to see it and I think from the entry I I was I was skeptic about which kind of architect it was in a very bad shape and and the moment I dived into the patio I I kind of noticed wow there something magical about this house and then coming to the house I discovered the guy who sold it obviously put all the blueprint and then sketches by Nitra and I was like Wow gave a call right away to Dora and I understood that we are in one of Nitra lost Nitra what we call then we discovered that the house was designed for Stephan Lord who commissioned NRA back in 61 to design a bachelor path for him Stephan Lord was a screenwriter who wrote Treasure Island chips many TV series musicals so I think the combination with him and Nitra led to this very um special feature special house the property itself is very special because it's at on top of this hill the house went through a series of additions and then also even with Stefan uh acquiring more land it's just very special because of the location you see the valley it's very quiet stepping in for the first time I felt like I like unlocked a jewel box uh I think that's what caught my eye like obviously walking through this entry this like very like misent like what what is this place yes and then we open the door we see the view and it was just this place is special I think for me it was looking on Los Angeles or California architecture mid century had a big impact for me one of the best just because of the Simplicity also it's a post beam structure the quality of spaces the shading the orientation the Simplicity the thickness of the roof all of that element made it uh for me a very special architecture I was very familiar with Richard NRA before as well and really liked I mean it was always this lner Nitra kuning you know in between these tree and once we started the project we went to see four or five houses I went to the archive of USC the apartment studio in Silver Lake the vdl house the chewy house the Taylor house I started collecting images and text Furniture I've learned so much about him uh it was amazing to dive into his world because he was a very rich world you know survival through design I really like the way he he expresses his design and also as an immigrant coming here an Austrian immigrant you know he Schindler and all that gang did an amazing work you know working with right that triangle exploded and showed a lot a lot of great architecture here we were also fortunate to get some of the original drawings and that was really helpful to help us kind of restore the entry we added this bonsai tree that wasn't there before also some of the proportions in the front we restored back to what what we assumed was the original sketches or original intentions that something happened over the years I'm very thankful each time when I open you know the bedroom door I see the view it's it's different all the time sometimes the belly disappears just to understand like the D dynamics of nature our family Dynamics also I mean we still kind of like travel around between like zones of the house together the children haven't really gotten used to living in such an expansive space yeah we end up in the we can for example on Friday night all the family sleeps in one room just because it's a I mean there's something nice about the family you know uh hanging out together uh but just we get used to living in a literally in a 700t house but I also do I've learned from this house to appreciate Nitra and not just by the style but but the clarity of design and that's something that I'm trying to convey also to our our students as well the house is facing fully North all the Southside basically the almost no windows which is terly amazing this house because of the thin roof you can open it around five or 5 minutes two doors and it clears out and you don't need AC um so all these old intentions you know everyone's talking about sustainability and Green Houses he didn't talk about it he just wear shoes and you know and walked to this office and did it you know so for me it's this kind of analogy also today I don't want to talk about sustainable design you know I don't tell you hey I just wear my shoes are and I'm walking great it's something that have to be part of your design facing where you face how you face how do you Orient the proportions the scale of the volumes all of that that's really the fundamental of architecture and you can see it translated here in a very elegant and so I think that's what's uh that's what captured me at least in the last year and a half for spal practice we focus on spatial experiences so I mean it's also something I encourage my students to do um often is just like how you know as an architect our our role is not just to make a pretty building but it's about how does one inhabit space that means different things in different moments right so you know if you're going to a really tall space that's very narrow versus a very wide space that's very low that spatial experience not you know not talking about decoration and not talking about um what's inside but just the space itself is very different so that along with probably trying this is probably because I've been living in very Urban spaces with a lot of people uh but how do you instigate like this kind of human interactions I I I strongly believe I think ER does too I mean we've done a lot of lectures about it too is this how architecture can help human interaction especially in today's society when we're becoming more closed because of um security and we're afraid of things um but how can architecture do the inverse and how does it promote uh people to interact more um whether by accident or purposeful so this process has been quite amazing as an architect to be able to uh restore this house when we purchased the house from the daughters they very much were grateful uh to have us as Architects because we wanted to restore and quoting one of them actually giving new life to the house that Journey has been really amazing it's been really amazing to live here it's been really amazing to be part of that Journey of giving the house new life but then at the same time to share the house with everyone for us was important to share this architecture natur we are trying to kind of share it with friends family but also architectural lovers naturally to make sure that this Legacy of you know a good essential design is not just you know something that we demolish quickly we just show how it could be what has been done what's valuable and this is just the basic the essential the way NRA did it is so important to preserve and in my opinion it's so important to share with other people it's so important to restore building like that definitely in kind of a in a so so fast culture that we live today it's really important to slow down to show how good just a simple plane in out breaking that rules could be a great way of [Music] living

Channel: OPEN SPACE

Views: 453,776

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Id: tdytlGTukN0

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 30 2023