Croix, a small town in the suburbs of Lille, is full of treasures. After the reopening of the Villa Cavrois in 2015, the work of Robert Mallet-Stevens finally rehabilitated. The nearby Delcourt house, designed by Richard Neutra, is an unknown masterpiece. It is the only construction of Richard Neutra in France, and the last project of the architect who died in 1970. Built in the city centre of Croix (Nord) in 1968 for the industrialist Marcel Delcourt, it unfolds in a vast wooded garden. A privileged location that allowed the architect, close to Frank Lloyd Wright and Rudolf Schindler, to build a real "house in the meadow" for the couple and their seven children, where architecture and nature interlock on 600 m2. The Delcourt house has nothing to envy to the Californian creations of Neutra: filiform beam-structure, open plan, horizontality marked by the extension of the floors and ceilings beyond the glazed facades, curtains and movable partitions, polychrome walls, all the elements of the modern vocabulary of the architect are applied here. Without decontextualizing the work so far: the bricks of the fireplace come from a neighbouring town, Hem; the floors are in Artois sandstone. In addition, part of the integrated furniture was designed by Richard Neutra and his partner Bruno Honegger (staircase, furniture of the family room, sofa, library, etc.). All these qualities led to the inscription of the building and its parcel to the Historic Monuments in July 2000. The house, which has known only two owners since its inauguration in 1968, is today on sale.

Also watch the lecture about Richard Neutra's VDL House by Raymond Neutra at the Van Schijndel House in Utrecht in 2013.