Houses for sale designed by mid-century masters, from FLW to Mies to Le Corbusier

The mansion was one of six houses built for the 1936 Los Angeles "California House and Garden Exposition" in order to present the latest innovations in technology and materials in residential construction, thus anticipating John Entenza's Case Study Houses project that initiated the widespread diffusion of Californian Modernism. The house was relocated to its current location in 1943. With its 210 square metres distributed on two levels, the house is a summa of the designer's expressive language, from the functional layout to the essential geometries and large ribbon windows. The numerous room views onto patios, terraces and the garden offer a relationship of uninterrupted continuity between exterior and interior.

A flat with exquisite design and a spectacular view of Lake Michigan is in itself a dream home; then, when you add that it is located in one of the most iconic landmarks of the Chicago skyline, its appeal is even more unquestionable. The 150-square-metre dwelling is in fact located in one of the two famous steel and glass towers designed by Mies Van der Rohe in the city: with the visible structural grid that characterises the envelopes, the large glass surfaces, the functionality and flexibility of distribution and the partial prefabrication process, the complex has contributed to founding a new architectural culture in "vertical" constructions, becoming a universal paradigm of the International Style.

The duplex is located on the fifth floor of the Cité Radieuse, a work representing the culmination of Le Corbusier's research on housing typologies at the time of post-war reconstruction and set in a three-hectare park between the sea and the hills. The flat, with a surface of approximately 64 square metres on two levels, has living spaces and a kitchen on the upper floor and a bedroom and office space on the lower floor, opening on a terrace. The large windows looking south-west offer an unobstructed view of the sea and generate a diffuse light effect all across the living spaces.

This 570-square-metre dwelling, set in a two-hectare park, is one of the few examples of Neutra's architecture on the East Coast and re-proposes, even far from California, the consolidated and recognisable language of the modernist master: a simple and flexible layout, essential volumes (in stone and stucco), the ever-present swimming pool, extensive glass surfaces from which one can perceive the uninterrupted relationship between interior and exterior. A diffuse luminosity radiates into the rooms that were designed to house rich art collections, in addition to a vast living room and seven bedrooms.

Considered to be one of the last three houses designed by Wright in California, this 355-square-metre home designed for a football champion - and completed posthumously under the supervision of the master's grandson and one of his apprentices - is characterised by a single-level building housing a large living area, seven bedrooms and six bathrooms. The open floor plan, the large windows blurring the boundaries between indoors and outdoors, and the generous overhang of the roof recall the established characteristics of Usonian homes, aimed at satisfying the taste and comfort needs of the American middle class.