In 1936, the Austrian architect Richard Neutra was commissioned by Grace Miller to design a small house in Palm Springs to accommodate her avant-garde Mensendieck exercise program.
Neutra's interest in the effects of architecture on health and well-being and Grace Miller's interest in giving built form to her program combined to realize a forward-thinking and groundbreaking work of architecture. The Miller House, Neutra's first desert houAt the dawn of his international fame, architect Richard Neutra was approached by a St. Louis socialite, Grace Lewis Miller, to design a small winter home on the edge of glamour-baked Palm Springs. Miller wanted an open, light-filled house that could also act as a studio for her fashionably avant-garde exercise course in posture and grace, "The Mensendieck System." This unique program, combined with the desert landscape and the proactive, health-minded client appealed to the idealist in Neutra. The frequent, fervent dialog between Neutra and Miller, who had great mutual respect, produced a work of
forward-thinking and artful architecture.
In Richard Neutra's Miller House, Stephen Leet traces the conception and realization of the house, examines the complex relationship between architect and client, and shows how the Mensendieck System influenced the creation of this seminal Neutra project. Beautiful duotone photographs by Julius Shulman, excerpts from the detailed correspondence between Neutra and Miller, and sketches and drawings provide valuable insight into the design process.
Like the houses of Albert Frey, a contemporary of Neutra's who also build in the desert, the Miller House shows how architecture, the California landscape, and an interest in well-being can intersect in a moment of the architectural sublime.
Stephen Leet is an architecture professor at Washington University
in St. Louis.
se, is unique in interweaving the architect's interests in climate, landscape, and health, with the therapeutic intentions of Miller's exercise program and her progressive attitudes regarding the role of women in modernity.
In Richard Neutra's Miller House, Stephen Leet traces the conception and realization of the house, the complex relationship between architect and client, and shows how the Mensendieck System influenced the creation of this seminal Neutra project. Beautiful duotone photographs by Julius Shulman, excerpts from correspondence between Neutra and Miller, and sketches and drawings provide valuable insight into the design process