Nearly a century after its construction, VDL Research House continues to resist the stillness typically associated with architectural monuments. Completed in 1932 by Richard Neutra with support from Dutch industrialist and philanthropist Cees H. van der Leeuw, the house was conceived less as a static residence and more as an evolving social and experimental environment. Part home, part studio, part architectural laboratory, the project explored how modern living could unfold through light, movement, reflection, and constant interaction between interior and exterior space.
Located near Silver Lake in Los Angeles, the VDL House introduced many of the ideas that would come to define Neutra’s architectural language: sliding partitions, lightweight construction, layered transparency, and carefully orchestrated sequences of space culminating in a rooftop solarium open to the Californian sky. Yet beyond its formal innovations, the house also operated as a cultural meeting point. Artists, intellectuals, students, and clients regularly passed through its rooms, helping shape the broader creative network that fueled modernist Los Angeles during the twentieth century.
That atmosphere of exchange has quietly resurfaced. During Frieze Los Angeles week in 2026, the house becomes the setting for The Sky Between Us, a site-specific exhibition by John Zabawa. Developed specifically for the architecture of the VDL House, the paintings are installed throughout living spaces, corridors, and private rooms, allowing the building itself to become inseparable from the work on view. Zabawa’s compositions, focused on interiors and Southern Californian landscapes, echo Neutra’s own fascination with spatial continuity, where boundaries between domestic life and the outside world remain deliberately porous.
A similar revival is unfolding elsewhere in Los Angeles. In the Hollywood Hills, Neutra’s 1934 Galka Scheyer House is entering a new chapter as Blue Heights Arts & Culture. Originally designed for art dealer Galka Scheyer, a key advocate for the avant-garde collective Die Blaue Vier, the house once served as both residence and cultural salon for artists connected to European modernism. Today, its steel-framed structure, ribbon windows, and expansive terraces overlooking the city are once again hosting exhibitions, residencies, and contemporary artistic interventions, including projects by Rita McBride.
Together, these renewed spaces reveal something essential about Neutra’s vision of architecture. His houses were never intended to function as frozen historical artifacts. Instead, they were designed as living frameworks for conversation, creativity, and encounter; structures capable of adapting to new cultural energies long after their construction.
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Photo: (c) Rich Stapleton