De Stijl

Chapter 3 ｜ History of Modern Architecture | Year III Part II

 Study of Architectural Theories Evolving Out of

De Stijl
Chapter 3 ｜ History of Modern Architecture | Year III Part II

ART DECO

Kiran KC
Department of Architecture
Pokhara Engineering College
Phirke, Pokhara
 De stijl
the style
Neoplasticism

1917 leiden
nETHERLANDS
1931 pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to
the essentials of form and colour;
simplified visual compositions to vertical and
horizontal, using only black, white and primary
colors.

Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture

De stijl
The name of a journal that was published
by the Dutch painter, designer, writer,
and critic Theo van Doesburg that served
to propagate the group's theories.

The artistic philosophy that formed a

basis for the group's work is known as
Neoplasticism—the new plastic art (or
Nieuwe Beelding in Dutch).

Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture

De stijl Like other avant-garde movements
of the time, De Stijl, "the style"
emerged largely in response to the
horrors of World War I and the
wish to remake society in its
aftermath.

Viewing art as a means of social

and spiritual redemption, the
members of De Stijl embraced a
utopian vision of art and its
transformative potential.

Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture

De stijl
Among the pioneering exponents of abstract
art, De Stijl artists used a visual language
consisting of:

precisely rendered geometric forms

- usually straight lines, squares, and
rectangles--and primary colors

Expressing the artists' search "for the

universal, as the individual was losing its
significance," this austere language was meant
to reveal the laws governing the harmony of
the world.

Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture

De stijl

Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture

De stijl
Even though De Stijl artists created work
embodying the movement's utopian
vision, their realization that this vision
was unattainable in the real world
essentially brought about the group's
demise.

Ultimately, De Stijl's continuing fame is

largely the result of the enduring
achievement of its best-known member
and true modern master, Piet Mondrian.

Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture

De stijl
Instead of representations of natural forms, Neo- Mondrian and other Neo-Plastic artists
Plasticism relied on the relationships between line thought that the merging of painting,
and color to emulate the opposing forces that architecture, and design would hasten
structured nature and reality.
the coming of an ordered and
Neo-Plastic compositions juxtapose horizontal and harmonious society.
vertical lines along with the primary colors of red,
yellow, and blue against the non-colors of black, They intended that this utopic vision, coming
white, and grey to produce timeless balance. from the "dynamic equilibrium" sought out in
Neo-Plastic paintings, would spread to the
interior of the studio, to the home, the street,
Neo-Plasticism abolished the figure-ground and the city, and eventually to all of the
dichotomy by using an irregular grid structure that
world.
resisted arranging the pictorial elements into a
hierarchy.

Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture

De stijl
Mondrian sets forth the delimitations of
Neoplasticism in his essay "Neo-Plasticism in
Pictorial Art".

"this new plastic idea will ignore the particulars of

appearance, that is to say, natural form and colour.
On the contrary, it should find its expression in the
abstraction of form and colour, that is to say, in the
straight line and the clearly defined primary colour"

Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture

 Theo van Doesburg,
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture Counter-Construction, 1923
 Theo van Doesburg, Hotel Particulier
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture (with Cornelis van Eesteren)
 Theo Van Doesburg and
C. van Esteren,
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture Maison d'artiste, 1923
 Gerrit Rietveld, Schroder House, Utrecht, Netherlands, 1924
Designed using abstract principles of De Stijl, composed as a
series of overlapping elementary planes
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
De stijl
The rules of Neo-Plasticism Piet Mondrian, Compositions
No subject nor object, total
were designed to produce pure, abstraction

uncompromising, and Painting as purely

composition, where geometry
structured abstractions and color becomes the subject
of the painting, rather than
representing a subject

Rationalization of nature

No figure nor ground,

groundless and figureless
compositions – elimination of
figure and ground dialectic

Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture

De stijl
1. Theo van Doesburg
2. Piet Mondrain
3. B. van der Lack
4. V. Huszar
5. Antony kok – Poet
6. G. Vantongerloo
7. J. J. P. Oud (1890-1963)
8. J. Wils
9. R. Vant’ Hoff (1852-1911)
10.Gerrit Rietveld (1888-1960)

Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture

Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
 “As with his early chairs, Rietveld gave a new spatial
meaning to the straight lines and rectangular planes
of the various architectural structural elements,
slabs, posts and beams, which were composed in a
balanced ensemble.”

Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture

Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture
De stijl
The main progress of modern European
Architecture came from Holland

De Stijl is a short lived geometric abstract

movement, and is paved to modern architecture and
of industrial design.

The style applied : clothes, curtains, furniture,

carpets, packing materials etc.

Year III – Sem VI History of Modern Architecture