Gerrit Rietveld
Initially associated with The Style, he became a Modernist. In Utrecht he completed his famous Rietveld-Schröder residence.
Rietveld-Schröder residence
Arguably the most famous project of Gerrit Rietveld that you will be able to find in Utrecht is the Rietveld-Schröder residence. Both the exterior and the interior are worth absorbing. You can tour the house (with an audio tour, but the accompanying guides love to answer your questions) and enjoy the inventive ways of dealing with a limited amount of space. Make sure to make reservations early as the house is small and interest substantial! By the way, the Rietveld-Schröder residence is on the Unesco world heritage list.
Other projects by Rietveld
If, on exiting the Rietveld-Schröder residence, you go through an underpass you will find yourself on Erasmuslaan. These two blocks of townhouses were built in the thirties following the design of Gerrit Rietveld. After this, he built an almost identical block of four homes at Robert Schumanstraat 13 - 19 in Utrecht. As you can recognize, at this point ha has already left The Style movement and at this point considers himself a representative of New Realism and New Construction movements.
Near the Rietveld-Schröder residence you can also admire a little annex by Rietveld, intended for the private chauffeur of the van der Vuurst de Vries family, located at Waldeck Pyrmontkade 20. The square building contains a garage for the car on the ground floor and a small apartment on the next level. This is truly an interesting design; Rietveld attempted to apply a grid of 1 x 1 m2 and used prefabricated elements. It was an interesting experiment, but the devil is in the detail: the place was known to be leaking all over.
You are probably familiar with the famous Rietveld chair, which can be admired in Centraal Museum; Rietveld started as a furniture and cabinet maker. But Rietveld has completed more projects in Utrecht. Centraal Museum offers an iPhone App with pictures and a route tracing his projects. Also, there is an interesting little guide by Willemijn Zwikstra with a bicycle route along the Rietveld locations in the city. The app or the guide is definitely not a luxury, as not all projects by Rietveld are as easy to recognize as Rietveld-Schröder residence.
An overview of many of Rietveld's works can be found at architectuurgids.nl.
Address: Prins Hendriklaan 50 3583 EP Utrecht
Visit the website: www.centraalmuseum.nl/bezoeken/locaties/rietveld-schroederhuis/
Typical for Gerrit Rietveld:
The Style | De Stijl Furniture Architecture Inventive