At the core of today’s LA art scene are two 1930s houses by Richard Neutra

Modernist architecture in Los Angeles was never just about form. Much of this is due to Richard Neutra, the Austrian-born architect who emigrated to the United States in 1925 and became a central figure in shaping California modernism, promoting an architecture open to climate, landscape, and the cultural life of the city. For Neutra, the house was not an isolated object but a social device: a space designed to foster encounter, exchange, and cultural production.

The Neutra VDL House in Silver Lake, built as his residence and studio, and the Galka Scheyer House in the Hollywood Hills, conceived as a home and gallery for a European art dealer who had emigrated to Los Angeles, embody this vision from the outset.

We visited them during Frieze Week, when exhibitions and openings across the city turn Los Angeles into a convergence point for the international art scene, to see how they continue to function as active spaces for artists and exhibitions.

When Richard Neutra completed the VDL House in 1932 on the shores of Silver Lake, he conceived it as his own residence and studio, but also as a laboratory where architecture, daily life, and work could overlap. Built with the support of Dutch philanthropist Cees H. van der Leeuw, the house anticipates the principles of California modernism: a light structure, reflective surfaces, sliding walls, and a vertical sequence of spaces culminating in a rooftop solarium. Carefully positioned openings and the continuity between interior and exterior orient the gaze toward the landscape and the city, turning the house into an instrument of observation.

From the outset, the VDL House functions as a meeting place. Neutra receives clients, students, and artists here, using the domestic space as an extension of his practice and helping shape modernist Los Angeles’ cultural network. Rather than separating private and public life, the house brings them together, anticipating the home-studio as a space of work and exchange.

Today, the VDL House is open to the public and continues to function as an exhibition space, hosting temporary interventions that reactivate the domestic environments designed by Neutra. During Frieze Week, from February 26 to March 1, 2026, it hosts The Sky Between Us by Los Angeles–based artist John Zabawa, a painting exhibition developed specifically for the house. The works unfold across living areas, corridors, and private rooms, depicting interiors, urban views, and landscapes of Southern California. Installed within the domestic setting, the paintings enter into dialogue with the architecture and its continuity between interior and exterior, returning the house to its original role as a place of observation and cultural production.

Frank Escher and Ravi GuneWardena (FAIA)

Just two years after the VDL House, Neutra designed a house in the Hollywood Hills for Galka Scheyer, a German art dealer who had emigrated to the United States and was a key promoter of Die Blaue Vier, a group closely connected to the earlier Blaue Reiter circle and including Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, and Alexej von Jawlensky. Scheyer envisions a house that is at once a home, gallery, and meeting place for artists and intellectuals. The design reflects this ambition: a modernist steel structure with flat roofs, ribbon windows, and terraces overlooking the city. The open plan and abundant natural light allow the domestic spaces to function as exhibition environments, integrating daily life and cultural activity. Here, Scheyer organizes lectures, exhibitions, and gatherings, hosting key figures of the European avant-garde who had emigrated to Los Angeles, including John Cage and László Moholy-Nagy.

Situated on a ridge above Sunset Boulevard, the house combines seclusion with sweeping views of the city, providing a setting for work and exchange among artists and intellectuals.

Today, reactivated under the name Blue Heights Arts & Culture, the house returns to its original role as an artist residence and exhibition space, with a program of temporary stays and exhibitions developed in direct dialogue with the building.

As architects Frank Escher and Ravi GuneWardena (FAIA), who are leading the restoration, explain, “contemporary art and the significant architectural legacy of the twentieth century are important factors in Los Angeles’ cultural topography.” Yet for many years, the two rarely intersected: “the only exception was the MAK Center at the Schindler House. Only recently has this model been more widely followed, with the Neutra VDL House and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House becoming sites of important cultural dialogue.” “The Scheyer House represents an even more specific case, as it was originally designed as a place dedicated to both art and living.” After Scheyer’s death in 1945, however, “for nearly 80 years the house disappeared from public view, and successive owners made inappropriate alterations.” Today, the restoration and reactivation project aims to recover the building as part of its original vision.

The first resident artist, Beatriz Cortez, occupies the house between February and August 2025, using it as a workspace after her home in Altadena is destroyed in the fires that hit Los Angeles earlier that year. Her project culminates in Temporary Home, an exhibition unfolding across the interior and garden, reactivating the house as a site of hospitality and collective production. Installed throughout the domestic spaces, the works address migration, loss, and refuge, connecting the building’s history to contemporary experiences of displacement.

On the occasion of Frieze Week 2026, the house hosts Wunderkammer by Rita McBride, an installation that unfolds throughout the domestic spaces, reopening them to artistic use after decades as a private residence. The works extend across the rooms and outward toward the city, returning the house to its original function as a space for art. The title recalls the historical “chambers of wonder” and the idea of the home as a site of cultural collection and transmission, a vision already central to Galka Scheyer’s project.