Richard Neutra, the Viennese architect who became the storied emigre to Los Angeles did not just design fab Palm Springs houses for the likes of Edgar Kaufman Jr (now on the market for 25 million), he also thought about the education of young children, and what suited them best. (When Neutra's LA office eventually closed, there was a tag sale. I hurried and bought two keepsakes: a map, and the office radio which I like to imagine Neutra tuning to Mozart)

Now that the subject of elementary schooling is writ large during the pandemic as distance learning is very challenging for the young'ns, Neutra's LA Corona Avenue School, here represented in an image by architectural photographer Julius Shulman in 1953, is more than prescient. It followed in the steps of open air schools in Germany, France and throughout Europe designed at first for tubercular and ill children, but then adopted as a healthy way of pedagogy. (see images in the thirties of the Ecole de Suresnes in France above)

In LA of course, the absence of cold weather eventually made these designs more ubiquitous but the large sliding glass doors which were also featured in Neutra's (and Eames et al) domestic architecture brought the outside in and were adopted in less temperate climates.

I look to the current generation of forward thinking architects to revisit some of these buildings and see if they can figure out how to keep children safe, while learning and socializing with their pals during these most challenging times.