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The Rietveld Schröder House ( nl, Rietveld Schröderhuis) (also known as the Schröder House) in
Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Net ...
(Prins Hendriklaan 50) was built in 1924 by Dutch
architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
Gerrit Rietveld Gerrit Rietveld (24 June 1888 – 25 June 1964) was a Dutch furniture designer and architect. Early life Rietveld was born in Utrecht on 24 June 1888 as the son of a joiner. He left school at 11 to be apprenticed to his father and enrolled at n ...
for Mrs.
Truus Schröder-Schräder Truus Schröder-Schräder (1889–1985) was a Dutch socialite and trained pharmacist who was closely involved with avant-garde artists and architects of the De Stijl movement. Together with Gerrit Rietveld, she built a house for herself and her thr ...
and her three children. She commissioned the house to be designed preferably without walls. Both Rietveld and Schröder espoused progressive ideals that included "a fierce commitment to a new openness about relationships within their own families and to truth in their emotional lives. Bourgeois notions of respectability and propriety, with their emphasis on discipline, hierarchy, and containment would be eliminated through architectural design that countered each of these aspects in a conscious and systematic way." Rietveld worked side by side with Schröder-Schräder to create the house. He sketched the first possible design for the building; Schröder-Schrader was not pleased. She envisioned a house that was free from association and could create a connection between the inside and outside. The house is one of the best known examples of '' De Stijl''-architecture and arguably the only true ''De Stijl'' building. Mrs. Schröder lived in the house until her death in 1985. The house was restored by Bertus Mulder and now is a museum open for visits, run by the
Centraal Museum The Centraal Museum is the main museum in Utrecht, Netherlands, founded in 1838. The museum has a wide-ranging collection, mainly of works produced locally. The collection of the paintings by the Northern Mannerist Joachim Wtewael is by a lon ...
. It is a listed monument since 1976 and
UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...
World Heritage Site A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for ...
since 2000.


Architecture

The Rietveld Schröder House constitutes both inside and outside a radical break with all
architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings ...
before it. The two-storey house is situated in
Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Net ...
, at the end of a
terrace Terrace may refer to: Landforms and construction * Fluvial terrace, a natural, flat surface that borders and lies above the floodplain of a stream or river * Terrace, a street suffix * Terrace, the portion of a lot between the public sidewalk an ...
, but it makes no attempt to relate to its neighbouring buildings (although it shares an exterior wall with the last house in the terrace). It faces a motorway built in the 1960s. Inside there is no static accumulation of rooms, but a dynamic, changeable open zone. The ground floor can still be termed traditional; ranged around a central staircase are kitchen and three sit/bedrooms. Additionally, the house included a garage, which was very strange because Truus did not own a car. The living area upstairs, stated as being an attic to satisfy the fire regulations of the planning authorities, in fact forms a large open zone except for a separate
toilet A toilet is a piece of sanitary hardware that collects human urine and feces, and sometimes toilet paper, usually for disposal. Flush toilets use water, while dry or non-flush toilets do not. They can be designed for a sitting position popu ...
and a
bathroom A bathroom or washroom is a room, typically in a home or other residential building, that contains either a bathtub or a shower (or both). The inclusion of a wash basin is common. In some parts of the world e.g. India, a toilet is typically ...
. Rietveld wanted to leave the upper level as it was. Mrs Schröder, however, felt that as living space it should be usable in either form, open or subdivided. This was achieved with a system of sliding and revolving panels. Mrs Schröder used these panels to open up the space of the second floor to allow more of an open area for her and her 3 children, leaving the option of closing or separating the rooms when desired. A sliding wall between the living area and the son's room blocks a cupboard as well as a light switch. Therefore, a circular opening was made within the sliding wall. When entirely partitioned in, the living level comprises three bedrooms, bathroom and living room. In-between this and the open state is a wide variety of possible permutations, each providing its own spatial experience. The facades are a collage of planes and lines whose components are purposely detached from, and seem to glide past, one another. This enabled the provision of several
balconies A balcony (from it, balcone, "scaffold") is a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade, usually above the ground floor. Types The traditional Maltese balcony is ...
. Like Rietveld's Red and Blue Chair, each component has its own form, position and
colour Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are associ ...
. Colours were chosen as to strengthen the plasticity of the facades; surfaces in white and shades of grey, black window and doorframes, and a number of linear elements in
primary colour A set of primary colors or primary colours (see spelling differences) consists of colorants or colored lights that can be mixed in varying amounts to produce a gamut of colors. This is the essential method used to create the perception of a ...
s. There is little distinction between interior and exterior space. The rectilinear lines and planes flow from outside to inside, with the same colour palette and surfaces. Even the windows are hinged so that they can only open 90 degrees to the wall, preserving strict design standards about intersecting planes, and further blurring the delineation of inside and out.


Construction

Initially, Rietveld wanted to construct the house out of concrete. It turned out that it would be too expensive to do that on such a small building. The foundations and the balconies were the only parts of the building that were made out of concrete. The walls were made of brick and plaster. The window frames and doors were made from wood as well as the floors, which were supported by wooden beams. To support the building, steel girders with wire mesh were used.


World Heritage Site

The World Heritage Committee inscribed the Rietveld Schröder House on the
UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...
list of
World Heritage Site A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for ...
s on 2 December 2000, during the 24th session in
Cairns Cairns (, ) is a city in Queensland, Australia, on the tropical north east coast of Far North Queensland. The population in June 2019 was 153,952, having grown on average 1.02% annually over the preceding five years. The city is the 5th-most-p ...
,
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
. The committee decided to apply criterion i and ii, and said about the house:


Legacy

Only few years after construction of this building Polish architect Stanisław Brukalski built his own house in Warsaw in 1929 supposedly inspired by Rietveld Schröderhuis which he visited. His Polish example of modern house was awarded bronze medal in Paris expo in 1937.


Commemorations

The house was honored in two euro coins issued by the Royal Dutch Mint in 2013.


Gallery

File:Rietveld Schröderhuis HayKranen-7.JPG File:Rietveld Schröderhuis HayKranen-15.JPG File:Rietveld Schröderhuis HayKranen-1.JPG File:Rietveld Schröderhuis HayKranen-13.JPG File:Rietveld Schröderhuis HayKranen-14.JPG File:Rietveld Schröderhuis HayKranen-3.JPG File:Rietveld Schröderhuis HayKranen-4.JPG File:Rietveld Schröderhuis HayKranen-6.JPG


References

“Schröder House.” Plans, Sections and Elevations: Key Buildings of the Twentieth Century, by Richard Weston, Laurence King, 2004, pp. 48–49.


External links


website Rietveld Schröder HouseRietveld Schröder House
at the UNESCO World Heritage Centre
Visit site in 360° panophotography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rietveld Schroder House Houses completed in 1924 De Stijl Houses in the Netherlands Museums in Utrecht (city) Rijksmonuments in Utrecht (city) World Heritage Sites in the Netherlands Modernist architecture in the Netherlands Architecture museums in the Netherlands Historic house museums in the Netherlands Gerrit Rietveld buildings Buildings and structures in Utrecht (city)