KOBLICK RESIDENCE
Designed by Richard Neutra in 1937 for Los Angeles City College art professor Harry Koblick, this modest duplex occupies a steep hillside above the Silver Lake Reservoir, less than a mile from Neutra’s own VDL House. An unusually early work, the house captures Neutra in a period of experimentation, as the language of Southern California Modernism was still taking form.
Manola Studio led the nearly decade-long restoration alongside Eric Lamers, a master carpenter and longtime mentor to the studio’s founder, whose deep knowledge of Neutra’s work and uncompromising commitment to craft shaped the project from its earliest stages. Extensive research into Neutra’s drawings, archival photographs, surviving materials, and contemporaneous work guided the restoration. The process became an exercise in interpretation as much as preservation: determining what belonged to the original house, what had been lost over time, and where Neutra’s documented intentions could responsibly be reinstated.
Original and period-specific hardware, architectural glass, lighting, finishes, and fixtures were sourced or painstakingly reproduced, while millwork was rebuilt to Neutra’s specifications using salvaged old-growth redwood. Structural repairs were undertaken with equal precision, allowing the house to meet contemporary requirements while preserving the delicacy of its original construction. Select elements drawn but never realized in 1937, including Neutra’s exterior light trough, were introduced where the archival record offered a clear path forward.
The restoration sought neither to freeze the house in time nor reinterpret it through a contemporary lens, but to recover the clarity of the original architecture and allow Neutra’s evolving ideas about light, landscape, economy, and indoor-outdoor living to remain legible nearly ninety years later.
Year of Completion: 2023
Location: Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California
