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Approaching its 100th year, this villa by Gerrit Rietveld looks like a Mondrian painting and is just as joyful to behold
De Stijl was a Dutch art movement that emerged in the early-20th century. Striving for visual purity, painters like Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesberg produced abstract compositions made up of simple horizontals and verticals, using only primary colours and shades of black, white and grey. Gerrit Rietveld took this philosophy to a whole new level when, in 1924, he translated it into architecture. With the Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht, he created both a functional home and an uncompromising work of art.
Rietveld designed the unique house for Truus Schröder-Schräder, a socialite, pharmacist and mother of three. Newly widowed, she had decided to swap the neoclassical home she had shared with her late husband for one that better reflected her more avant-garde sensibilities. Although Rietveld had never created a building before, she knew he shared her tastes, having previously worked with him on a small-scale interior renovation, and felt he could give her the house that embodied the sense of freedom and flexibility she craved.
The design delivered on all counts. The formal composition resembles a 3D version of one of Mondrian’s paintings, imbued with the same delicate balance of line and shape, while the interior arrangement is progressive even by today’s standards. PerSchröder-Schräder’s instructions, every room has access to the outdoors. On the ground floor, this created a highly adaptable layout organised around a central staircase. The first floor is even more radical, thanks to mobile walls that transform the space from open-plan into three separate rooms, all with their own balconies.
Schröder-Schräder’s favourite spot in the house was
