The Modern Interior

about colour and space at their most sophisticated. In that house Rietveld
developed a number of innovative interior strategies that were to influence
designers through the rest of the century. It also represented an ideal
model of the way in which a relationship between an avant-garde architect
and his client could work. The Schroeder house, designed in 1924, has
usually been discussed in the context of the history of modern architecture,
rather than in that of the development of the modern interior.
Rietveld was first and foremost a cabinet-maker so, from one perspective,
the house can be seen also as a large-scale piece of furniture, a container
with multiple folding and moveable parts within it. Conceptualizing the
house in that way makes sense of the fact that its facades were not formal,
architectural statements dictating the nature of its interior spaces but
rather reflections of the house’s inner functions and spaces. It also makes
sense of Rietveld’s determination to minimize the idea of the inwardlooking,
middle-class home by blurring the distinctions between the
inside and the outside, and creating a single spatial continuum. That
determination was visible in several areas of the house, especially in one
of the upstairs corners where Mrs Schroeder’s desk was positioned. Two
windows met at that corner, opening outwards at ninety degree angles
away from each other, such that the corner could be completely elimin -
ated and, when she was at her desk, Mrs Schroeder could almost feel that
she was sitting outside. The whole space could be left open, as depicted
overleaf, or screens could be added to create a number of discrete spaces.
An impression of outside/inside ambiguity was also achieved by Rietveld’s
detailing of the window in the ground floor guest bedroom. He divided
it horizontally positioning half of it in front of a vertical structural pillar
and half behind it. The pillar was, therefore, simultaneously both inside
and outside the room. The sense of the permeability of the house’s walls
was reinforced by the presence of balconies in every room which served
to bring the outside in and take the inside out.
The house was designed by Rietveld as a dramatic alternative to
the large, sixteen-roomed villa in which Mrs Schroeder had lived when
her husband had been alive. Situated at the end of a terrace of conventional
houses, her new home was conceived as a setting for a modern
lifestyle that involved living an active and engaged intellectual life with a
minimal number of material possessions. Denying themselves the usual
trimmings of middle-class comfort, Mrs Schroeder’s family lived in a
small, eminently flexible space that was as efficient as it possibly could be.
(The presence of a housekeeper in the household undoubtedly made the 175