Neutra VDL House Silver Lake Boulevard, Los Angeles exhibition, Modern building LA installation photos, Design news

Neutra VDL House, Silver Lake Boulevard, Los Angeless

Modern House Los Angeles, United States of America – 20th Century Southern California Architecture exhibition.

May 2, 2025

Maayan Elyakim: Game of Goose
Site-specific exhibition at Neutra VDL House
On view through July 20, 2025

Book of Spirals, installation at Neutra VDL House:

Photos: Florian Holzherr

Location: Neutra VDL House, 2300 Silver Lake Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90039, USA

“Game of Goose,” the site-specific exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Maayan Elyakim is currently on view through July 20 at Los Angeles’s iconic Neutra VDL House.

“Game of Goose” thoughtfully reimagines Richard Neutra’s landmark residence, guiding visitors through an architectural narrative inspired by the historic board game. Elyakim explores themes of movement, chance, and shifting mental states, transforming the modernist house into an immersive, reflective experience. The journey from the ground floor entrance to the roof is conceived as an intensifying gradient that transitions from the cerebral to the experiential—much like moving through a three-dimensional game board.

Camel Table, 2025:

“The VDL House blurs the boundaries between interior and exterior, transforming architecture into metaphor. The interior symbolizes the mind or inner self, while the exterior reflects the outside world. With nearly 20 doors and glass walls, the house becomes a borderless space, like a body with a porous skin where the outside world constantly bleeds inward. Its imperfect corners, intersecting lines, and reflective surfaces—glass, mirrors, and pools—embody the interplay of opposites: introspection and exposure, functional and playful, body and spirit. The house’s essence met my creative journey, inspiring the creation of new artworks that channel its dynamic, living energy and explore the very questions at the heart of my practice.” – Maayan Elyakim

Maayan Elyakim Infinial, 2025:

The exhibition comprises ephemeral components, each purposefully situated throughout the VDL House:

· Tool Chest – a sculpture made of wood and cardboard, based on historical cabinets of curiosities , acts as a metaphorical body that encapsulates materials from the exhibition and elements from Elyakim’s artistic journey

· Bookmatch #2 – Framed marbled paper perpendicular to the mirror in Neutra’s study, creates the illusion of a symmetrical bookmatched pattern, evoking the fluidity of mental states.

· Both Hands – A screen print based on a drawing made simultaneously with both hands, articulating internal and external bodily processes.

· Book of Spirals – A sculpture positioned on the library beneath the window, featuring two ceramic “faces” with eyes made of shells, on opposite sides of an open “book” of spirals, tracing the relentless formations of the mind.

· Camel Table – A modified version of Neutra’s original reclining table in intermediate position, embedding into its surface a composition of complex patterns that refer to architectural pattern books.

· Rock – A sculptural form enfolded by unique fabric developed by Kvadrat, with its moiré effects creating shifting impressions of inner movements of light and color.

· Infinial – A spiraling aluminum staircase-shaped sculpture on the roof, culminating in a multi-colored anodized pattern facing west, echoing the sunset over the water reservoir that inspired much of Neutra’s work and time at the VDL.

Maayan Elyakim -‘Seashell Sphere’, 2022:

About the Artist

Maayan Elyakim is a multidisciplinary artist working across a broad spectrum of artistic media. His practice explores the potential of functional objects and the built environment to evoke abstract, emotional, and spiritual experiences. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries, including the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Galeria Labirynt in Lublin, and Dvir Gallery. He has participated in prestigious residencies, including the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (Maine, USA) and Pilchuck Glass School (Washington, USA).

About the Curator

Dan Handel is a writer and curator specializing in research-based projects that uncover underexplored ideas shaping contemporary built environments. He was the inaugural Young Curator at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal, has curated exhibitions for the Venice Biennale and Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, and served as curator of architecture and design at the Israel Museum. His writing has appeared in Harvard Design Magazine, e-flux Architecture, Pin-Up, and other leading publications.

Book of Spirals

About Neutra VDL House

The Neutra VDL Studio and Residences (1932-1965) of famed modernist architect Richard Neutra is owned by the Cal Poly Pomona Foundation, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. It is stewarded by the College of Environmental Design at Cal Poly Pomona with the primary purpose of using the house as an educational resource for ENV students and faculty, preserving and maintaining the property, providing tours of the house by Cal Poly Pomona architecture students to visitors, and hosting arts and culture programs that will enhance the facility’s mission as a community resource.

VDL Resident Director: Noam Saragosti
Dean, College of Environmental Design: Mary Anne Alabanza Akers

Neutra VDL House, Silver Lake Boulevard, Los Angeles images / information received 300425

Previously on e-architect:

Richard and Dion Neutra VDL Studio

VDL House Reopening 2021