The Wall Street Journal features our House 2G

Recently our House 2G has been featured on The Wall Street Journal article “Richard Neutra’s Southern California Style Lands in His Native Austria”, here are some excerpts:

Between the 1930s and the 1960s, Vienna-born Los Angeles architect Richard Neutra perfected a high-modernist take on residential luxury, marked by geometric open plans, flat roofs and walls of windows. Now an empty-nester couple back in Neutra’s native Austria have found inspiration in his Southern California style for their new Salzburg home.

In 2015, Mike and Ursula Gruber bought a 1/3-acre lot in the south of the city, known for its annual summer performing-arts festival. They then build and furnish a 2,150-square-foot home with an limestone facade, walnut interiors and a freshwater pond that serves as a chlorine-free outdoor pool. Construction started in March 2019, and the couple moved into the finished home in June 2020.

Relocating from a noisier spot in the center of the city, the couple decided to tear down the lot’s existing 1980s single-family home and start from scratch. Mr. Gruber, the 52-year-old CEO of a Salzburg-based medical-supply company, says the couple would have considered a renovation, but the look of the original house, which they had initially planned to use for rental income, “offered us nothing of value.” Instead, they started doing research in architectural books and other sources and settled on Neutra as a guide on how to create a home that would last them through retirement. They also decided to bring in a team of collaborators: Salzburg’s own Haro Architects and Spacesmunich, an interior-architecture firm from over the border in Germany.

From the street, the home doesn’t suggest a Neutra project.  The couple wanted stark limestone cladding, imported from Bavaria, and Roberto Rodriguez Paraja, a Haro principal, gave the structure’s roof a modified pyramid silhouette.

But the L-shape open plan, the glass doors and windows facing the terrace, and the simple elegant touches are Neutra-inspired elements, says Mr. Rodriguez Paraja.  Spacesmunich’s Annette Boguschewski, who saw Neutra projects firsthand when she studied and worked in Los Angeles in the 1990s, says the home’s timeless take on a Midcentury Modern interior lends a “Palm Springs-Frank Sinatra vibe.”

Source: article by Jeff S. Markus, originally published on The Wall Street Journal the July 27, 2022.

Photo Credit: Tobias Kreissl.

You can also find online a full and open copy of The Wall Street Journal’s original article in their partner publication Mansion Global: https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/richard-neutras-southern-california-style-lands-in-his-native-austria-01658948500