Richard Neutra’s only French home is for sale

Croix is famously home to Robert Mallet-Stevens’s seminal modernist landmark, Villa Cavrois, which underwent a multi-million, award-winning restoration in 2015. But a short distance away is a pretty much unknown gem by Richard Neutra – notably, his only residence in France.

Maison Delcourt is claimed to be the last Neutra house designed in 1968, just two years before his death, for French industrialist Marcel Delcourt. Neutra designed most of his work in California, where he introduced the International Style to the US, but his final creative years were spent mainly in Europe.

Maison Delcourt was conceived as a quintessential ‘house in the meadow’, sitting at the centre of a wooded park in the Lille suburb. The six-bedroom home is set across two levels and borrows from Neutra’s breezy boxcar designs with a post-and-beam structure and classic, open-plan horizontal spaces that are bookended by floor-to-ceiling glass, giving the illusion interior spaces are tumbling out onto the house’s sweeping lawn.

Much of the furniture and fixtures are original – designed by Neutra with his partner, Bruno Honegger and his architect son Dion Neutra, including a ‘floating’ timber staircase. Fireplaces are made with brick from nearby Hem and sandstone floors from Artois.

The Croix property has had two owners since completion. Architecture for Sale is now marketing the landmark modernist property for €2.3m.