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43-421: This was one of Mendelsohn's first major projects, completed when a young Richard Neutra was on his staff, and is his best-known building. Between 1917 and 1920 Mendelsohn created numerous sketches with the attempt to create a structure that reflects Einstein's groundbreaking theories. The exterior was originally conceived in concrete, but due to construction difficulties with the complex design and shortages from

86-504: A density of about 3 × 10 kg / m ; increasing with increasing depth. The Sun's photosphere is 100–400 kilometers thick. In the Sun's photosphere, the most ubiquitous phenomenon are granules — convection cells of plasma each approximately 1,000 km (620 mi) in diameter with hot rising plasma in the center and cooler plasma falling in the spaces between them, flowing at velocities of 7 km/s (4.3 mi/s). Each granule has

129-487: A 1947 article for the Los Angeles Times , "The Changing House," Neutra emphasizes the "ready-for-anything" plan – stressing an open, multifunctional plan for living spaces that are flexible, adaptable and easily modified for any type of life or event. Neutra had a sharp sense of irony. In his autobiography, Life and Shape , he included a playful anecdote about an anonymous movie producer-client who electrified

172-515: A long tour of the completed structure, waiting for some sign of approval. The design, while logical and perfectly sufficient to its purpose, stood out like an "ungainly spaceship" in the suburbs of Potsdam. Einstein said nothing until hours later, during a meeting with the building committee, when he whispered his one-word judgment: "Organic". Mendelsohn himself said that he had designed it out of some unknown urge, letting it emerge from "the mystique around Einstein's universe". In 1911 Einstein published

215-672: A partnership with his son Dion Neutra. Between 1960 and 1970, Neutra created eight villas in Europe, four in Switzerland, three in Germany, and one in France. Prominent clients in this period included Gerd Bucerius , publisher of Die Zeit , as well as figures from commerce and science. His work was also part of the architecture event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics . Richard Joseph Neutra died on April 16, 1970, at

258-585: A physician and environmental epidemiologist. Richard Neutra moved to the United States by 1923 and became a naturalized citizen in 1929. He worked briefly for Frank Lloyd Wright before accepting an invitation from Rudolf Schindler , a close friend from his university days, to work and live communally in Schindler's Kings Road House in California. Neutra's first works in California were both in

301-626: A prominent and important modernist architect. His most notable works include the Kaufmann Desert House , in Palm Springs, California . Neutra was born in Leopoldstadt, the second district of Vienna , Austria Hungary , on April 8, 1892, into a wealthy Jewish family. His Jewish-Hungarian father Samuel Neutra (1844–1920), was a proprietor of a metal foundry, and his mother, Elizabeth "Betty" Glaser Neutra (1851–1905)

344-528: A single stone (German: 'ein Stein') was placed where the bust had stood, a tradition that is still kept (the stone is regularly stolen or moved and has to be replaced). A few meters in front of the stairs to the Einstein Tower and set into the pavement of the forecourt is a fist-sized art object, a bronze reproduction of a human brain highly reduced in size, its shiny surface a sign of wear, inscribed with

387-448: A time window of three seconds. We reconstruct temporal continuity based on what is represented in the individual islands of consciousness" (translation). Taking up this idea, März titled his work "the 3 SEC Bronze Brain – Admonition to the Now – Monument to the continuous present" (translation). With the newest refurbishment of the Einstein Tower, a sign in front was unveiled with an access to

430-1142: A visiting professor of design at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont. In 1949 Neutra formed a partnership with Robert E. Alexander that lasted until 1958, which finally gave him the opportunity to design larger commercial and institutional buildings. In 1955, the United States Department of State commissioned Neutra to design a new embassy in Karachi. Neutra's appointment was part of an ambitious program of architectural commissions to renowned architects, which included embassies by Walter Gropius in Athens, Edward Durrell Stone in New Delhi, Marcel Breuer in The Hague, Josep Lluis Sert in Baghdad, and Eero Saarinen in London. In 1965, Neutra formed

473-437: Is radiated. It extends into a star's surface until the plasma becomes opaque, equivalent to an optical depth of approximately 2 ⁄ 3 , or equivalently, a depth from which 50% of light will escape without being scattered. A photosphere is the region of a luminous object, usually a star, that is transparent to photons of certain wavelengths . Stars, except neutron stars , have no solid or liquid surface. Therefore,

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516-735: The 1994 Northridge earthquake . The 1962 Maslon House in Rancho Mirage, California , was demolished in 2002. Neutra's Cyclorama Building at Gettysburg was demolished by the National Park Service in March 2013. The Slavin House (1956) in Santa Barbara, California was destroyed in a fire in 2001. Publications on Richard Neutra: Photosphere The photosphere is a star's outer shell from which light

559-459: The Stefan–Boltzmann law . Various stars have photospheres of various temperatures. The Sun is composed primarily of the chemical elements hydrogen and helium ; they account for 74.9% and 23.8%, respectively, of the mass of the Sun in the photosphere. All heavier elements, colloquially called metals in stellar astronomy , account for less than 2% of the mass, with oxygen (roughly 1% of

602-573: The Vienna University of Technology (1910–18) and also attended the private architecture school of Adolf Loos . In 1912, he undertook a study trip to Italy and the Balkans with Ernst Ludwig Freud (son of Sigmund Freud ). In June 1914, Neutra's studies were interrupted when he was ordered to Trebinje , where he served as a lieutenant in the artillery until the end of World War I. Dione Neutra recalled her husband Richard's hatred of

645-550: The Walk of Stars in Palm Springs, California . Neutra's 14,000 sqf "Windshield" house built on Fishers Island, NY for John Nicholas Brown II burned down on New Year's Eve 1973 and was not rebuilt. The 1935 Von Sternberg House in Northridge, California was demolished in 1972. Neutra's 1960 Fine Arts Building at California State University, Northridge was demolished in 1997, three years after suffering severe damage in

688-610: The Lovell Beach House, and the Richard and Dion Neutra VDL Research House (HCM #640; 1966). In California, he became celebrated for rigorously geometric but airy structures that epitomized a West Coast version of mid-century modern residential design. His clients included Edgar J. Kaufmann , (who had commissioned Wright to design Fallingwater , in Pennsylvania), Galka Scheyer , and Walter Conrad Arensberg . In

731-526: The MARTa Herford, Germany. The Kaufmann Desert House was restored by Marmol Radziner + Associates in the mid-1990s. The typeface family Neutraface , designed by Christian Schwartz for House Industries , was based on Richard Neutra's architecture and design principles. In 1977, he was posthumously awarded the AIA Gold Medal , and in 2015, he was honored with a Golden Palm Star on

774-464: The Nazis' anti-Semitic dictatorship began in 1933, the Einstein Tower lost its name and status as an independent institute. Pictures of Einstein were removed and sculptures were supposedly melted down. However, after 1945 it was discovered that staff members had rescued the portrait bust now to be seen at the base of the tower by hiding it behind crates in the spectrograph lab. As a hidden homage to Einstein

817-628: The Neutra-designed Kronish House (1954) at 9439 Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills sold for $ 12.8 million. In 2009, the exhibition "Richard Neutra, Architect: Sketches and Drawings" at the Los Angeles Central Library featured a selection of Neutra's travel sketches, figure drawings and building renderings. An exhibition on the architect's work in Europe between 1960 and 1979 was mounted by

860-589: The San Fernando Valley (now destroyed). A photo of Neutra and Rand at the home was taken by Julius Shulman . Neutra's early watercolors and drawings, most of them of places he traveled (particularly his trips to the Balkans in WWI) and portrait sketches, showed influence from artists such as Gustav Klimt , Egon Schiele etc. Neutra's sister Josefine, who could draw, is cited as developing Neutra's inclination towards drawing. Neutra's son Dion has kept

903-717: The Silver Lake offices designed and built by his father open as "Richard and Dion Neutra Architecture" in Los Angeles. The Neutra Office Building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places . In 1980, Neutra's widow donated the Van der Leeuw House (VDL Research House) , then valued at $ 207,500, to California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona) to be used by the university's College of Environmental Design faculty and students. In 2011,

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946-412: The Sun's mass), carbon (0.3%), neon (0.2%), and iron (0.2%) being the most abundant. The Sun 's photosphere has a temperature between 4,400 and 6,600  K (4,130 and 6,330 °C) (with an effective temperature of 5,772  K (5,499 °C)) meaning human eyes perceive it as an overwhelmingly bright surface, and with sufficiently strong neutral density filter, as a hueless, gray surface. It has

989-409: The age of 78. He was known for the attention he gave to defining the real needs of his clients, regardless of the size of the project, in contrast to other architects eager to impose their artistic vision on a client. Neutra sometimes used detailed questionnaires to discover his client's needs, much to their surprise. His domestic architecture was a blend of art, landscape, and practical comfort. In

1032-414: The complex disturbances of the solar atmosphere. The characteristics and behavior of magnetic fields provide the key to understanding solar activity and are at the focus of work at the Einstein Tower. The solar magnetic field can be measured with the help of a double spectrograph and two photoelectric polarization analyzers. Measurements in the photosphere , the visible light realm, permit conclusions about

1075-548: The digital exhibition Einsteinturm revisited . The exhibition shows how the Einstein Tower was conceived both scientifically and architecturally, and explains, why it needs to be refurbished on a regular basis. Richard Neutra Richard Joseph Neutra ( / ˈ n ɔɪ t r ə / NOI -tra ; April 8, 1892 – April 16, 1970) was an Austrian-American architect . Living and building for most of his career in Southern California , he came to be considered

1118-597: The early 1930s, Neutra's Los Angeles practice trained several young architects who went on to independent success, including Gregory Ain , Harwell Hamilton Harris , and Raphael Soriano . In 1932, he tried to move to the Soviet Union, to help design workers' housing that could be easily constructed, as a means of helping with the housing shortage. In 1932, Neutra was included in the seminal MoMA exhibition on modern architecture, curated by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock . From 1943 to 1944, Neutra served as

1161-410: The elongated profile of the entire facility. Soon after research started at the site, it became evident that the proof sought would be harder to obtain than originally anticipated since the minimal shift of spectral lines was obscured by other solar influences. The reason was atmospheric turbulence on the solar surface. However, Einstein and Freundlich had from the beginning not only been interested in

1204-603: The four characters, 3 SEC. It was created by the Berlin artist Volker März , who placed it here and in an identical form in front of the Neurological Institute of the Charité in Berlin. The small sculpture refers to a scientific thesis of Ernst Pöppel according to which "the experience of continuity is based on an illusion. Continuity arises through the networking of contents, which in each case are represented in

1247-458: The initial version of his innovative General Theory of Relativity. One of the predicted effects according to the theory was a slight shift of spectral lines in the sun's gravitation field, now known as the red shift . The solar observatory in Potsdam was designed and constructed primarily to verify this phenomenon. The Mount Wilson Observatory in California, the first tower telescope worldwide,

1290-408: The lab rooms are under each other; in Potsdam they are arranged horizontally. Another rotating mirror directs the sunlight to the spectrograph lab located in the basement behind an earthen wall on the southern side of the tower. It is about 14 m long and thermally insulated. Here is where the light is split up into its spectral components and analyzed. This design of a horizontal laboratory wing led to

1333-698: The landscape architect Gustav Ammann . In 1921, he served briefly as city architect in the German town of Luckenwalde , and later in the same year he joined the office of Erich Mendelsohn in Berlin. Neutra contributed to the firm's competition entry for a new commercial center for Haifa, Palestine (1922), and to the Zehlendorf housing project in Berlin (1923). He married Dione Niedermann, the daughter of an architect, in 1922. They had three sons, Frank L (1924–2008), Dion (1926–2019), who became an architect and his father's partner, and Raymond Richard Neutra (1939–),

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1376-473: The moat around the house that Neutra designed for him and had his Persian butler fish out the bodies in the morning and dispose of them in a specially designed incinerator. This was a much-embellished account of an actual client, Josef von Sternberg , who indeed had a moated house but not an electrified one. The novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand was the second owner of the Von Sternberg House in

1419-462: The photosphere is typically used to describe the Sun 's or another star 's visual surface. The term photosphere is derived from Ancient Greek roots, φῶς, φωτός/ phos , photos meaning "light" and σφαῖρα/ sphaira meaning "sphere", in reference to it being a spherical surface that is perceived to emit light. The surface of a star is defined to have a temperature given by the effective temperature in

1462-672: The realm of landscape architecture: namely, the grounds of the Lovell Beach House (1922–25), in Newport Beach, which Schindler had designed for Philip Lovell ; and a pergola and wading pool for the complex that Wright and Schindler had designed for Aline Barnsdall on Olive Hill (1925), in Hollywood. Schindler and Neutra would go on to collaborate on an entry for the League of Nations Competition (1926–27); in

1505-709: The retribution against the Serbs in an interview conducted in 1978 after his death: "He talked about the people he met [i.e. in Trebinje] … how his commander was a sadist, who was able to play out his sadistic tendencies…. He was just a small town clerk in Vienna, but then he became his commander." Neutra took a leave in 1917 to return to the Technische Hochschule to take his final examinations. After World War I, Neutra moved to Switzerland, where he worked with

1548-623: The same year, they formed a firm with the planner Carol Aronovici (1881–1957), called the Architectural Group for Industry and Commerce (AGIC). Neutra subsequently developed his own practice and went on to design numerous buildings embodying the International Style, 12 of which are designated as Historic Cultural Monuments (HCM), including the Lovell Health House (HCM #123; 1929), for the same client as

1591-472: The situation at higher altitude levels. The Potsdam astronomers participate in the operation of an observatory on Tenerife . Instruments to be used there are first developed and tested at the Einstein Tower. The Einstein Tower also plays an important role in training students. In the tower's entrance area there is a bronze bust of Einstein which was originally located in one of the rooms of the observatory. After

1634-405: The specific problem of the red shift, but had also intended basic research in solar physics , and the laboratories were so designed that new equipment could be installed without difficulty. The turbulent behavior of the outer solar atmosphere soon became the primary subject of research at the Einstein Tower. The red shift could be proved only in the 1950s after it became possible to precisely analyze

1677-419: The sun. Because of the vertical arrangement, air turbulence near the ground has virtually no effect. In the Einstein Tower the construction containing the optics consists of two wooden platforms, each six m high, placed one above the other. The telescope has a lens objective of 60 cm diameter and focal length of 14 m. Rooms for observations and measurements are located at the base of the tower. In California

1720-453: The war, much of the building was actually realized in brick, covered with stucco. Because the material was changed during construction of the building, the designs were not updated to accommodate them. This caused many problems, such as cracking and dampness. Extensive repair work had to be done only five years after the initial construction, overseen by Mendelsohn himself. Since then numerous renovations have been done periodically. The building

1763-739: Was a member of the IKG Wien . Richard had two brothers, who also emigrated to the United States, and a sister, Josephine Theresia "Pepi" Weixlgärtner , an artist who married the Austrian art historian Arpad Weixlgärtner and who later emigrated to Sweden. Her work can be seen at the Modern Art Museum in Stockholm. Neutra attended the Sophiengymnasium in Vienna until 1910. He studied under Max Fabiani and Karl Mayreder at

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1806-489: Was heavily damaged by Allied bombing during World War II, leaving it in a state that, as the architecture blog A456 noted, was ironically more in line with Mendelsohn's conceptual sketches than the pre-war structure was. It underwent a full renovation in 1999, for its 75th anniversary, to correct problems with dampness and decay that had meant decades of repair. It is often cited as one of the landmarks of expressionist architecture . According to lore, Mendelsohn took Einstein on

1849-403: Was the model for the facility designed by Freundlich. In tower telescopes a coelostat (a system with two deflecting mirrors, pronounced "seelostat") at the top of a vertical construction directs light down to an objective. The actual lens system is rigidly integrated into the construction. The mirrors at the top are movable and only these small lightweight instrument components are needed to track

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