Rietveld Schröder House, (Utrecht, Netherlands); 1924; De Stijl

The Schroder home in Ritterfeld, also known as Schröder House. It located in Utrecht, The Netherlands and designed by Dutch architect Herit Ritterfeld. Rietveld was built the project as a residential building for Mrs. Truus Schröder- and his three children in 1924.

The project is one of the best examples of the "De Stijl" building, and it also the only authentic Dutch-style building. Mrs. Schroder lived in the house until her death in 1985. The house was restored by Bertus Mulder and open to the public.

This two-story house was built at the end of a row of terraced houses, but it did not try to connect with its neighboring buildings. The flexible space has no hierarchy in the floor plan.

The structure of the house is reinforced concrete slab and steel. Walls are made by bricks with paints. Those window frames, door frames and flooring are made by wood.

The building interior space has flexibility has showed distinguishable and unique on every level. The ground floor is still traditional; it is a kitchen and arranged on a central staircase which are dining and living area.Studio space and reading room are set left hand side of the house. The bedrooms and storage space are upstairs and the loft has satisfied the requirements of the Planning Bureau. It formed a large open area, except a restroom and a bathroom. Ritterfeld had hoped to keep the upper level, but Mrs. Schroeder feels that as a living space it should be used in various forms. Open space or subdivided are achieved by sliding and rotating the panel. When it is fully separate by the partitions, the living area consists of three bedrooms. The bathroom and the living room are in all possible arrangements between close and open state. Each arrangement can provide its own unique experience.

The façade is a collage of planes and lines.  It looks like a complex of vertical and horizontal line up, but not in neatly. It could be representing different layers. The crisscross lines have showed the different functions as balcony, windows, and entrance. As Rittfeld's Red and Blue Chair, each component has its own form, location and color. The colors can increase the feeling of the façade, and set it as a part of functions such as black is window frame and door frame, white is the surface and grey is the shadow of the exterior wall.Even though the square line pattern made it chaos, but it also shows order .

The architecture not only has hierarchy, the designer also paints different colors on different panels to shows the rhythm of façade.

The outstanding external dimensions of the building do not undermine the sense of visual harmony, because each prominent volume has a larger wall behind it as a collocation, making the building visually more harmonious.

The vignette used in the exterior of the building is not the color of the same color, but the white wall with a strong dark gray. Add some yellow and red railings. Highlight the elements of each part of the building.

Overy, Paul. The Rietveld Schroder House.Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.1988