Richard Neutra in Spain: Consumerism, Competition, and U.S. Air Force Housing

During the mid-twentieth century, transatlantic exchanges between architects often occurred in the context of ColdWar politics. While many of these exchanges involved overt manifestations of state-sponsored ideologies, others, such as Richard Neutra’s participation in the 1956 competition to design U.S. Air Force housing in Spain, demonstrated the personal ambitions of the architects involved more than they did any government agendas. Neutra’s approach to the competition, in which he collaborated with Spanish architects, reveals his predisposition to commodify his work for an international market; in turn, the Spaniards were eager to appropriate and consumeNeutra’s ideas. In Richard Neutra in Spain: Consumerism, Competition, and U.S. Air Force Housing, Brett Tippey analyzes the politics surrounding the competition, the nature of the collaborative relationship between Neutra and the Spaniards, the details of the (unbuilt) designs, and the enduring impact ofNeutra’s intervention on Spanish architecture. The resources for this study include Neutra’s published texts, Spanish professional journals, and the Richard and Dion Neutra Papers (UCLA), as well as the original dossier Neutra submitted to the competition jury.