Well It was my 40th birthday and with the kids attending crèche and school, Anke surprised me with a day out as my present. She gave me an address in Utrecht, which I hacked into Maybelle (My phone based navigation software) and she navigated us to the Rietveld Schroder House, via an apple strudel and a cappuccino in La Place.
The house was designed by a furniture maker in the mid 20's and it was stunning at the time and still today. Mrs Schroder also helped heavily in the design process to make the house functional and livable for her children. You can see the hand and eye of the furniture maker everywhere.
We had a guided tour of not only this house but some more houses across the street he designed a little later.
The upper floor has fold back walls to give it a light airy feel and wonderful use of colours light and perspective.He wondefully joins the landscape, the outside of the house and the inside of the house.
He also has a famous chair design:
Anke and I were inspired enough to buy many books, and we are going to try and remodel our study to make it a Rietveld room, with a bed, fold away table and chairs, large shutters and bed bases painted in primary colours and placed on the walls as 'art' when not in use. Let's see how it goes. the beauty of Rietveld objects is that the pieces are easy to build as he designed them that way (a sort of early IKEA visionary)
