ABSTRACT
The metaphorical interpretation of steel houses is a way of making them familiar and thus acceptable. Some design are promoted metaphorically, others assume metaphorical readings. The use, by Richard Neutra, of the word “chassis” to describe the frame of his buildings, as in his second-placed design of 1935 in a competition run by Architectural Forum, indicates the close relationship, in his mind, between automobiles and houses, something confirmed by the inclusion of a Ford Model T headlight in the stairwell at the Lovell Health House. 1 Neutra never actually designed a house to look like a car, although the house he built in 1935 at Northridge, California, for Josef von Sternberg (Figure 4.9), the film director who launched Marlene Dietrich, was fast and streamlined in appearance. Yet, despite being clad in sparkling aluminium, it was, surprisingly, not a steel-framed structure. 2 Thus it was really far less innovative than his smaller, boxier, contemporary Beard House in Altadena. In the hiatus following the completion of the Lovell Health House, Neutra did design some aluminium buses for Alcoa and the White Motor Bus Company of Cleveland, Ohio. But these were not metaphors for houses.
