Design Research--Rietveld Schroder House＆Red Blue Chair

Rietveld Schroder House【fig1】 was built in 1924 for a window mother, Truus Schroder, who raise three children alone. The concept of Rietveld Schroder House which came from Miss Truus is having a close relationship with her family, also she played an important role in the design progress. According to the concept, the designer created an open space with the sliding door because of the opening area, family members have more opportunity to connect each others. In the ground floor【fig2】, you can see the construction is a big open place but it still could be turned into a traditional separated room by moving the sliding door; ranged around by a staircase which located in the central and one kitchen and four multifunctional spaces for sleeping, working and studying surround the staircase. Going to upstairs (second floor) 【fig3】, it contains three bedrooms and a storage space which are only sperated by portable partitions. For the living space, there are three criteria were given by Miss. Schroder about the room which are the bed should be able to fit in tow different positions, each room should be supplied the water and all should including the way to connect the outdoor space directly【fig4】. All of these designs are produced for achieve the initial concept which is allow more of an open area for her and her three children with the sliding and revolving panels to open up the space of second floor. The moveable sliding door give the flexible for them to open or close the sliding door as they want. Except the ground and second floor, there is a garage on the ground as another special space even Miss Truus did not own a car.

When it comes to the outlook of Rietveld Schroder House【fig5 6】, it does not look like the ordinary buildings which only present as a cube. The entire shape of appearance of Rietveld Schroder House looks like the accumulation of boxes with white, black and three primary colours. White and black are used on the wall to present a big aspect and the primary colours (yellow, black and blue) are used as the decorations to create the thin vertical and horizonal lines at the cross on the window【fig7 8】, the edges of balconies and some other places. This design was completely matched the De Stijil style which could be founded in 1917 in Leiden. Except the shape and the colour present interestingly, another special design is the corner of the second floor which is entirely used windows as the walls【fig8】, this design makes that corner feel like the outdoor space. This style not only could be seen at the appearance of building but also could be found in the interior design and furniture.

Rietveld Schroder House is well-known because it is the only building present the De Stijil style on not only the appearance of house but also the interior design and whole furniture. As you can see the geometric shapes and pure primary colour fulfil the whole interior space【fig9 10 11】, it provides a colourful and humourize scene.

The most famous furniture in this building is Red Blue Chair 【fig12】which is the icon of De Stifi. Stijil simplified the construction of the chair. It is combined by several panels and sticks which are made of unstained beech wood with black and primary colours. As you can see, the light yellow is always used on the end of every stick to indicate that the lines extend infinitely. The chair back has 30 degree of slide which give people more support when they against their back on the chair back. In 1917, this is a totally unfamiliar style for the ordinary people until 1920s. The designer made this chair from a standard cut of timber and hope it can be mass-produced rather than handcraft. However, the chair has never be produced in a large scale. Some people gave the comment that the flat wood is too hard for them to feel comfortable. Rietveld did not disagree this complain, he simply state that this chair is not functional, it was simply produced as a manifesto, it is a flesh way for the future style of furniture.

Image Sketching

Gerrit Thomas Rietveld is a furniture designer architect who born in 1888. At the age of 12, he started to work in his father’s workshop and started his own furniture workshop since 1717.

During his whole creative life, he presented completely different style of works, including furniture and buildings, which reflected different art style. The most famous work is Rietveld Schroder House when he was influenced by the De Stiji【Fig13 14】. De Stiji is the style which advocate to simplify the form of object to show the obstruction. Artists use the geometric shapes with black, white and pure primary colour to creates the simple patten. Thus, as you can see, both of the shape and colour that Rietveld used in Rietveld Schroder House, included the interior part of building and furniture reflect the typical De Stiji style. After 4 years that he designed Rietveld Shcroder House, he changed his style that he creates his work, he broke out with the De Stiji style and started to create the building associate with functionalist style which advocated designing the building base on what it is made for. During this period, he designed Nieuwe Bouwenin【Fig15】which is completely different with De Stiji. It is more focus on functional and efficient rather than aesthesis. In 1934, Rietveld designed the Zig-Zag Chair【Fig16】 which reflected minimalistic design. Minimalistim is the concept about visual art which also presents the geometric abstraction. The designer only used four wooden panels to construct the Zig-Zag Chair in a Z-shape by using the Dovetail joints. This structure seems not strong to support people’s body but it actually stables enough to undertake human’s body. The Z-shape is similar with the Red Blue Chair, both of them presented the abstractive and geometric shape. However, the difference is the colour of Red Blue Chair showed the several color even they are only black and three primary colors and the Zig-Zag Chair only has wooden colour in the original virsion. The Zig-Zag Chair is designed in different colours in this modern era to contribute beauty in some stylize interior design【Fig17】. In additional, the unique, armless and legless shape gave an important influence for the later chair structure such as Cantilever chair【Fig18】 and even affect the modern design in both interior design and furniture.

Since 1900, modernism which is also named Bauhaus style is the major art style which reflected in design, architecture, painting, music, poster and literature. Most of the designers, artists and architectures presumed the concept of modernism which advocated the simple form and functional design rather than the decoration. De Stiji which was mentioned gives an important impact for modernism in using the abstracted shape, simple form in the work. So, you can see there are some works which are produced in modernism reflect the same style.

One of the icons of Bauhaus is the Bauhaus poster【Fig19】. It used the abstractive and geometric shape to combine in the advertisement of exhibition. Moreover, it used the planes, lines, points and different style of characters to make this print more interesting and innovative. The colour in the advertisement is simple, only shows yellow, red and black to create simple and clear picture.

Bauhaus is not only reflected in graphic design. Wassily Chair 【Fig20】is another design which shows the Bauhaus style. It was produced by Marchel Breurer in 1925 and be used in Bauhaus faculty. He got the inspiration form the bicycle wheel and start to think about using the structure and shape to produce the frame of chair and the finial outlook【Fig21】 looks simple and fashionable. It was made of the steel tube as the chair legs and arms so and the leather as the seat and back. Moreover, it only presented two colours which are grey and black. The black surface leather could be replaced by any colour, so that the chair with simple outlook can be used in most of situations and public places.