Rietveld, Gerrit Thomas (1888–1964)
October 29, 2009 | In: Architectural History
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Originally a furniture builder, Gerrit Rietveld was partially responsible for the architectural ideals of the De Stijl movement of the early 1920s. His Schröder House epitomized many of the movement’s beliefs, including simplicity of form, verticals and horizontals that intersect and penetrate each other, primary colors, asymmetrical balance, and elements separated by space (Brown, 1958). Born in Utrecht, Netherlands, Rietveld joined his father’s furniture workshop at a young age. He attended evening classes in architecture, studying with the architect P. J. C. Klaarhamer. By 1917, he opened his own furniture workshop, and a year later he met various members of the newly formed group calling themselves De Stijl (Brown, 1958). Beginning his architectural practice in Utrecht he felt an affinity for the modern movement.
For several years, Rietveld exhibited his furniture across Europe, and even sent a chair to a Bauhaus show in Weimar in 1923 (Brown, 1958). Of all his well-known furniture designs, the Red Blue chair was the most exhibited and publicized. The chair was constructed of plywood planes, painted red and blue, floating through black vertical and horizontal sticks that overlapped each other. The compositionally elegant chair resembles a three-dimensional version of a Mondrian painting, although it was built prior to Mondrian’s mature work.
Rietveld routinely destroyed many of his architectural drawings to make room for his latest projects; but with his prolific practice, evidence of his architectural drawing skills remains (Baroni, 1977; Vöge and Overy, 1993). These drawings demonstrate various stages in Rietveld’s design process: construction diagrams, alterations and refinement, and ambiguous first proposals.
The sketch page shows variations for a child’s highchair studied from numerous angles. The sketches have been strewn across the page, with several of them overlapping and filling the available open space. The objects were sketched in ink then treated with colored pencil to provide texture and shading to several (possibly the most promising) renditions. Rietveld was using ink to outline the forms and emphasize the overall composition. The heavy, reinforced profiles suggest the construction of the chairs and the emphasis that Rietveld often put on the edges of his furniture. This technique darkened the profile and allowed for better viewing of the shape, and also accented the frequently used materials of plywood or planks of wood. The planar qualities of the chairs suggest the extension of these planes into space, reflecting some elements of De Stijl philosophy. For example, the ends of the black sticks supporting the planes of the Red Blue chair were painted a contrasting yellow. The repeated parallel lines were also necessary to imitate the thickness of the wood. Structurally, providing an approximation of the dimensions of the wood helped him to visualize the stability of the chair. Similar to the Zigzag chair, he was evaluating the balance and counterbalance that would provide steadiness.
This highchair appears to be based on the design of the Zigzag chair, designed approximately ten years earlier. Because the seat needed to be higher than the Zigzag chair Rietveld was evaluating alternatives for proportion – variations for the length of the base plane in relation to the taller ‘leg.’ In another attempt to visualize the completed chair, Rietveld used colored pencils to represent the shadows and tones of an anticipated red finish. These sketches allowed him to inspect the design threedimensionally, prior to building a model or prototype.
