There are a lot of wonderful things about Mammoth, but its buildings generally aren’t at the top of the list.     For students of modern architecture, though, our town—at least nearly 1,100 square feet of it—is quite noteworthy, thanks to two tiny cabins designed in the late 1960s by the office of famed architect Richard Neutra.
    As homes get bigger and real estate prices soar higher than wood-beam ceilings in the Bluffs, these gems lay hidden—just as the architect intended—in the heart of Mammoth’s so-called Ghetto.
Dion Neutra (Richard’s son and partner) designed his first Mammoth home on Joaquin Road in 1966—one year after he had entered his father’s practice.
     “I designed it for a cousin of my first wife—Roland Von Huene, who had an extremely limited budget; hence the simple modular solution. He had a friend, Harold Nuffer, who then commissioned me to build the Mono Street house.”  
    The flat-roofed, post-and-beam structures have stood the test of time, in terms of ability to handle snow load and of aesthetics.
    “It’s better for year-round living in Mammoth than Neutra could have imagined,” said longtime Mammoth architect Stephen Kabala.
  
The concept was purely practical—do the best for the site with limited funds. “We just designed the beams to carry that load,” Dion Neutra explained.
    The younger Neutra, who today maintains the Neutra practice from his Silver Lake office, drafted the cabins true to the style of his father, who is widely known as the father of “California modern” architecture and the herald of Europe’s International style in 1920s Los Angeles.
    In his Southern California residential designs, glass creates flow between exterior and interior spaces, keeping man close to nature,where Neutra thought he ought to be. When Neutra came to California, he brought with him the tenets of the Bauhaus school, the philosophy of “less is more.”
    “It’s simplicity of detail,” Kabala said, “something that is actually very difficult to achieve.”
In recent years, Neutra’s legacy has become more prominent, with many glossy magazine pages devoted to images of the carefully restored Kaufmann house in Palm Springs, or the Lovell house in Los Angeles.
    Still, the Mammoth Neutras were kind of a secret. Although the Nuffer family still owns the Mono Street house, the Joaquin Road property changed ownership in 1999. When Mammoth realtors Sheryl and Roy Saari bought the Joaquin Road house, they were not aware of its architectural significance.
    They asked their daughter, Joani Lynch, to scope out the place. Her first impression wasn’t good. The tiny house was buried in snow. “I wasn’t in love with the place,” Lynch recalled.   
    Her feelings changed once she moved in.
    “There is just something about the feeling inside that house, the way the windows are, the way the light comes in. It was my own little private nook in the forest.”
    Lynch, director of communications at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, lived in the 568-square-foot house for two years. When the house went on the market in 2001, both Lynch and her parents felt it was important that the new owners appreciate the Neutra heritage.
    They do.
    Current owner Jennifer Kun of Big Bear Lake uses the Joaquin Road house as a Mammoth base for ski racing for her family. Although she knew of Neutra’s work, Kun never believed that such limited square footage—a rectangle split down the middle by a single wall and door—could be comfortable for a family of four.
    “It’s an amazing design,” Kun said. Her first instinct was to cover the floor-to-ceiling windows that form an L around one corner of the place. Happily, though, the windows remain curtain-free, with unobstructed views of the densely wooded lot. “We call it the snow globe house. It feels like you’re outside when you’re in it.”
    The windows bring nature indoors, and multifunctional space and modular elements—hallmarks of Neutra’s style—keep everything in its place.
    Kabala, with whom Kun consulted for a possible addition, was surprised to learn that anything drafted by the Neutra practice even existed in Mammoth, his home of 22 years. He was excited by the possibility of working on a project involving a Neutra.
    “I’m a modernist trapped in mountain rustic,” Kabala admitted. He was impressed with the place. “It’s in very good condition, very faithful to the original design with cabinetry and built-ins—quite the signature piece, reduced to the smallest conceivable design.”
    Dion Neutra and faithful students of modernist architecture have concerns about the fate of the two cabins.     “What protects these houses?” Neutra asked.
    It’s all in the name and the design—smart, practical and joyfully livable. A Neutra—even a 568-square-foot one—could be worth much more than the valuable land it’s built on.
    Kabala has an academic spin for what’s so compelling about these structures.
     “It’s ‘form follows function’ taken to the next level,” he said. “To the sensual, function has no function—that’s a quality we look for in a truly timeless work of architecture.”