Rietveld schroder house, de stijl movement, Mondrian inspired home and architecture, architecture in de-stijl period, details about Rietveld schroder house, flexible Architecture, Furniture maker Rietveld's design. revolutionary architecture.
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Rietveld Schroder House
201532023
Designed in 1924. A private residence until 1985 . Architectural highlight of De Stijl and iconic landmark in Utrecht. Still as visionary and eccentric as it was when it was built in the 1920s Designed by Gerrit Rietveld Continues to impress architects and interior designers with its innovative solutions to prominent design questions of its time.
The flexibility of the interior spaces and the obviously planar quality of the house makes it distinguishable and unique on every level. The Schroder House is the only building that was designed in complete accordance with the De Stijl style Which was marked by primary colors and pure ideas.
The Netherlands-based De Stijl movement embraced an abstract, pared-down aesthetic centered in basic visual elements such as geometric forms and primary colors . Partly a reaction against the decorative excesses of Art Deco, the reduced quality of De Stijl art was envisioned by its creators as a universal visual language appropriate to the modern era, a time of a new, spiritualized world order. Led by the painters Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian - its central and celebrated figures - De Stijl artists applied their style to a host of media in the fine and applied arts and beyond
Rietveld was one of the movement's leading exponents. The Rietveld Schröder House is an embodiment of De Stijl . Characteristic features include the fluid transitions between interior and exterior, the clean horizontal and vertical lines and the use of all primary colors, alongside white, grey and black.
Upon the death of Mr. Schroder Schrader, his wife felt the need to move into a smaller house with their three kids, where she would live until her death in 1985. In 1924, Truus Schröder asked well-known Utrecht furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld to design a new house for her. A recently widowed mother of three, she wanted a dwelling completely attuned to her – And to her unconventional ideas about what a home should be. Having worked with Rietveld in the past, she knew his disdain for tradition. Schröder played an important role in the design process. She knew exactly what she wanted: Simplicity and A space that freed rather than constrained her. Truus Schröder
Until then, Rietveld had created mainly furniture and scale models. His renowned Red and Blue Chair, for example, was designed around 1919. Never before had he been asked to design an entire house. For Rietveld, Schröder's project was a dream come true. He pulled out all the stops, trying out new ideas in keeping with De Stijl .
Rietveld's ideal house was spacious, simple and functional. He came up with all kinds of clever solutions to achieve this. One such idea involved sliding walls on the first floor. By day, this was an open space, but in the evening, the Schröder family could split it up into three separate rooms. There was one room for the daughters, another for the son, and a living room with a table and stove, giving everyone some privacy.
The two-story house contains a transformable kitchen/dining/living area, studio space and reading room on the bottom, And the second floor contained bedrooms and storage space, only separated by portable partitions.
The flexibility of space meant that there was no hierarchical arrangement of rooms in the floor plan.
The collapsible walls upstairs positioned around a central staircase were designed to provide the children with an option of pushing the partitions in during the day for an open play space and closing them at night for private bedrooms.
The three criteria given by Mrs. Schroder about the rooms for her kids stated that A bed should be able to fit in two different positions, E ach room should have access to the water supply and D rainage, and all should have a door to access the outdoors directly.
The details were well planned by Rietveld And was prominent in other areas of the design, like specific paint colors to distinguish different spaces or functions. It is obvious that the architect had previous experience making furniture, especially when noticing the detail and functionality of the window screen, portable partitions, and table made for the children.
An interesting example of this is the front door, where black paint is used because Rietveld anticipated it would be accessed the most and would therefore be easily soiled.
Another of Rietveld's clever ideas was the iconic corner window on the top floor. Both the large window and the small one perpendicular to it swing open, dissolving the corner to make it feel like one is outdoors.
Rietveld also came up with the idea to use wooden panels as shutters for the windows. This creates a sense of peaceful security in the house. The staircase is concealed behind a sliding door. This created a quiet spot for the telephone in the hallway and also served to shut out the cold.
Rietveld sought to make the most of the space in and around the house. He did this by incorporating three-dimensionality – H eight, Width and Depth – in all facets of the design. Take this lamp, for example.
the three-dimensionality can also be seen in his famous Red and Blue Chair. This chair has become a symbol of De Stijl and It is the epitome of functionality, consisting of only 15 Beachwood slats and 2 rectangular panels.
This three-dimensionality is equally manifest in the lines of the façade.
Rietveld Schröder House is on Prins Hendriklaan in Utrecht. Back in 1924, it was on the outskirts of the city. And opened up to only a few views worth framing. Quite literally so, because it looked out on nothing but a vast polder landscape on one side. This beautiful view played a pivotal part in the design.
In fact, the view from the house was so important to Truus Schröder that, when the land opposite was released for development in the early 1930s, she bought it right away. She did not want to take any chances on what she saw from her window. Rietveld and Schröder designed two residential blocks to occupy what would later become Erasmuslaan .
When a four-lane motorway and viaduct were built across the front lawn in the 1960s, Rietveld said the house might just as well be torn down, Since what linked the interior and exterior had been destroyed.
Truus Schröder lived in the house from 1925 until her death in 1985. Initially with her three children, later with Gerrit Rietveld. Her favourite spot in the house was the first floor, Where she had the best view of the polder landscape and felt as if a weight had been lifted from her. Because she spent so much time there, Rietveld installed a speaking tube that let her talk to visitors at the door without going downstairs.
Rietveld would remain involved with the house. Schröder even gave him a downstairs room to use as studio, where he worked on new designs. After his wife died in 1957, Rietveld moved in with Schröder . He lived there until his death in 1964. What makes the Schroder House an icon of the Modern Movement is its radical approach to design, the use of space, and the purity of its concepts and ideas as represented in the De Stijl movement. Its transformational quality of evenly matched spaces composed of independent planes perfectly met the goals of the De Stijl movement. “As with his early chairs, Rietveld gave a new spatial meaning to the straight lines and rectangular planes of the various architectural structural elements, slabs, posts and beams, which were composed in a balanced ensemble.”
The main structure of the house is of reinforced concrete slabs and steel profiles. Walls are made of brick and plaster; window frames, doors, and floors were made from wood. To preserve the strict design standards about intersecting planes, the windows are hinged so that they are only able to open 90 degrees to the wall.
At her death, Truus Schröder left the management of the house to the Rietveld Schröder House Foundation and the Centraal Museum. To this day, visitors from every corner of the globe can continue to enjoy this seminal work of art.