GERRIT REITVELD

ARCHITECT AND
FURNITURE DESIGNER
BY-
JAIGANESH
TEJESHWINI
DIVYASHREE
PONNALAGI
 INTRODUCTION
 Name – Gerard(Gerrit) Thomas Rietveld or Gerrit Rietveld
 Born – 24 June 1888-1964
 Place- Utrecht, Netherlands
 Famous as – Furniture Designer and Architect
 Award: sikkens prize. for his entire oeuvre insofar as he contributed in this
to the realization of the synthesis between space and color.

 He was one of the most important designers and architects of the 20th
century.

 Rietveld taught himself Drawing, Painting and model making.

 At a point of time he also became a furniture maker.

 He became an architect in 1919,the year in which he joined

 De Stijl movement.
 IDEAS OF GERRIT RIETVELD
• Rietveld aimed for simplicity in his furniture and all the
construction work that he did in his life time.

• All the work that he did he emphasized on using primary

colors(Red, Blue and Yellow) and grey & black color.
• He also tried to work towards Inexpensive construction and
production methods, new materials, prefabrication technique
and standardization.

• In 1930s he started working with prefabricated concrete slabs

which was very unusual at that time

• From 1920s he was concerned with social housing and the

result was seen in 1950s in his housing projects in Utrecht and
Reeuwijk.
How can we identify Rietveld’s style?

 Most of his works represent the De Stijl principles.

 Gerrit Rietveld adopted what he perceived to be a purer form of

geometry, consisting of forms made up of straight lines and basic
geometric shapes, largely rendered in the three primary colors.

 He embraced an abstract, pared-down aesthetic.

 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.
 CONTRIBUTION TO THE ART WORLD
• He was One of the principle members of dutch artistic movement
called De Stijl along with Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian in
1919.
• Rietveld famous furniture
– Red and Blue chair
– Zig-Zag Chair

FURNITURES OF GERRIT RIETVELD

DE STIJL PAINTING

RED AND BLUE CHAIR

ZIG-ZAG CHAIR
• FAMOUS BUILDINGS
– The row houses at Utrecht
– The Dutch pavilion
– The sculptor pavilion in the Rijksmuseum Kroller
muller
– Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam
– Rietveld’s Schroder House
– Muziekschool, Zeist
– Play media

Van Gogh’s Museum

 SCHRÖDER HOUSE
• The Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht
was commissioned by Ms. Truus
Schröder- Schräder, It was built in 1924.

• It was a manifesto of the ideals of the

De Stijl group of artists and architects
in the Netherlands in 1920s.

• The Schröder House is a

UNESCO world heritage site.

• It differs from other significant

buildings of the early modern movement,
such as the Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier
or the Villa Tugendhat by Mies van der
Rohe.
ABOUT SCHRÖDER HOUSE’S ARCHITECTURE
• Compositions generally
emphasize the separation of
planes, the application of
primary colors, and the spatial
relationship of solids to voids.

• Window sizes vary on an

individual building from large
to small. They may be arranged
in patterns or one unit on a
large wall.
• Flat roof, asymmetry, geometric
forms, white or gray walls with
details highlighted by primary
colors.

• Rectangular shapes define the

geometric repetition of windows,
doors, and blocks of color.

• Flat roofs are typical, and

distinctly different from other
structures.

• The two story house is situated at

the end off the street but does not
relate with its neighboring
buildings.
 • The difference lies in particular in the treatment of architectural space
and in the conception of the functions of the building.

• In the interior also only primary

colors i.e. red, blue and yellow
were used and grey color.
INTERIOR OF A SCHROGGER HOUSE

 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.

 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.

 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 collapsable 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.
• This kind of detail was well planned by Rietveld and was prominent in other
areas of the design, like specific paint colors to distinguish different spaces or
functions.

• 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 solved.
 Van Gogh Museum
• The Van Gogh Museum is an art museum in Amsterdam in the
Netherlands.

• This museum also features the work of Dutch artist Vincent Van
Gogh and his contemporaries.

• The museum buildings were designed by Gerrit

Rietveld and Kisho Kurokaw.
• The Rietveld building is the main structure of the museum
and exhibits the permanent collection.

• The building has a rectangular floor plan and is four stories high.
PLAN OF VAN GOGH MUSEUM

KISHO KURAKAW GERRIT REITVELD

 THE FIRST VAN GOGH MUSEUM

Rietveld began designing the Van Gogh

Museum from 1963 to 1964.

 After the architect's death in 1964, the

project was completed by his disciples
J. Van Dillen and J. van Tricht.

 The construction of this first building

was concluded in 1973.

 Additionally, in 1999 Martien van Goor

added an offices wing that allows better
communication between the different
blocks in the complex.
 The volumetric composition consists of three overlapping boxes at different
heights in a staggered sequence, and organized around a central courtyard.

 In this space, lit from above, the staircase becomes the central element.

 The entrance fromy Paulus Potterstraat Street, is stressed by a

horizontal slab covering a lobby; this sort of "floating" elements is very
common in Rietveld designs.
 Red and Blue Chair
• The chair was designed in 1917.

• This chair was one of the major examples in

promoting in De Stijl movement.
•Seat/Backrest · Birch plywood panel with beech veneered
edges and tops.

•Finishing polyester lacquer, halfpolished, in blue (seat) and

red (backrest).

•Structure · Massive beech wood.

•Finishing matt black lacquered, with crossbar edges in

yellow or in white.

•The construction system of the frame of the chair is based

exclusively on a sequence of joints and wooden pins.
•This furniture is constructed in the style of
neoplastism ,that is usage of straight lines and simple
geometric shapes. Then the usage of primary colours like
red,blue,yellow,and black white and grey tones.
 Zig-Zag Chair
•This chair provided an early
example of a cantilevered seat .

• and is composed of four wood

boards articulated end-to-end to
form an extremely eye-catching
example of an unstable structure.

•The crafts mastery executed the

dove-tail joints, which add to the
beauty of the piece.
Recognition :
Rietveld had his first retrospective exhibition devoted to his
architectural work at the Central Museum, Utrecht, in 1958. When the
art academy in Amsterdam became part of the higher professional
education system in 1968 and was given the status of an Academy
for Fine Arts and Design, the name was changed to the Gerrit
Rietveld Academy in honour of Rietveld
Two software tools, both for code review, have been named after
Gerrit Rietveld: Gerrit and Rietveld.