Richard Neutra was a Jewish Austrian-American architect. Living and building for the majority of his career in Southern California, he came to be considered among the most prominent and important modernist architects. He designed numerous buildings embodying the International Style, twelve of which are designated as Historic Cultural Monuments, including the Lovell Health House and the Richard and Dion Neutra VDL Research House. In California, he became celebrated for rigorously geometric but airy structures that symbolized a West Coast variation on the mid-century modern residence.