Rietveld Schröder House
The small house at the end of a terrace in Utrecht looks like a Mondrian painting in three dimensions. Planes, lines and primary colours slide against one another. The upper floor has sliding walls, so that the rooms can be opened into one.
Truus Schröder-Schräder was widowed in 1923 and wanted a new home for herself and her three children. She engaged the cabinetmaker and architect Gerrit Rietveld, and they designed the house together. It was built in 1924 on the edge of Utrecht, at the end of a row of older houses. Rietveld was part of the artists’ group De Stijl, which with Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg sought to create a new art of straight lines and primary colours.
The house consists of flat panels, lines and beams shifted against one another. The walls are white and grey, and details such as columns and window frames are painted red, yellow, blue and black. The ground floor is divided into ordinary rooms, but the upper floor has almost no fixed walls. With sliding walls it can be divided into bedrooms or opened into a single large room. In one corner the windows can be opened so that the corner disappears. Everything is carefully thought through, down to the furniture and storage.
Truus Schröder lived in the house until her death in 1985. Rietveld had his studio there for a time and lived there in the last years of his life. The house is a museum and has been a World Heritage Site since 2000. It is regarded as the only building that fully realises the principles of De Stijl and has influenced modernist architecture around the world.