Exiled in L.A.: The Untold Story of Leopold Fischer’s Domestic Architecture

The first English-language volume to explore the work of architect Leopold Fischer, and the inaugural study of his California legacy.

In 1936, Leopold Fischer (1901-1975), in exile from Nazi Germany, arrived in California, where he created a small but distinct oeuvre of mostly domestic architecture. In contrast to his famous peers Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra, immigrants whose Southern California buildings are frequently examined--and who, like Fischer, studied with the modernist architect Adolf Loos--Fischer and his California structures have, until now, escaped the attention of architectural history.

Exiled in L.A. examines Fischer’s important, yet overlooked, contributions to Southern California architecture. As the whereabouts of Fischer’s archives remain unknown, Volker M. Welter grounds the designer’s California works in comparison with his pre-exile projects and the compositions of fellow architects in California. In the 1920s, Fischer created experimental working-class housing estates in Germany that pioneered ecological construction and living practices. Comparable to their predecessors, Fischer’s California buildings revolve around the ＂functioning, the organization of a home,＂ as he defined domestic architecture in 1926. Featuring new photography and detailed architectural plans, this book is an original contribution to the literature on Southern California’s built heritage.

Volker M. Welter is a professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Tremaine Houses: One Family’s Patronage of Domestic Architecture in Midcentury America (Getty, 2019).