Background
Gerrit Rietlleld was born on the 24th of June, 1888 in Utrecht, Holland as the son of a joiner.
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Gerrit Rietlleld was born on the 24th of June, 1888 in Utrecht, Holland as the son of a joiner.
He left school at 11 to be apprenticed to his father and enrolled at night school before working as a draughtsman for C. J. Begeer, a jeweller in Utrecht, from 1906 to 1911. At first his interest was in the applied arts, but it was not long before he was also fascinated by architecture.
By the time he opened his own furniture workshop in 1917, Rietveld had taught himself drawing, painting and model-making. He afterwards set up in business as a cabinet-maker.
Rietveld designed his famous Red and Blue Chair in 1917. Hoping that much of his furniture would eventually be mass-produced rather than handcrafted, Rietveld aimed for simplicity in construction. In 1918, he started his own furniture factory, and changed the chair's colours after becoming influenced by the 'De Stijl' movement, of which he became a member in 1919, the same year in which he became an architect.
He designed his first building, the Rietveld Schröder House, in 1924, in close collaboration with the owner Truus Schröder-Schräder. The design seems like a three-dimensional realization of a Mondrian painting. The house has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000.
Rietveld broke with "De Stijl" in 1928 and became associated with a more functionalist style of architecture, known as either Nieuwe Zakelijkheid or Nieuwe Bouwen. The same year he joined the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne. From the late 1920s he was concerned with social housing, inexpensive production methods, new materials, prefabrication and standardisation. In 1927 he was already experimenting with prefabricated concrete slabs, a very unusual material at that time. In the 1920s and 1930s, however, all his commissions came from private individuals, and it was not until the 1950s that he was able to put his progressive ideas about social housing into practice, in projects in Utrecht and Reeuwijk.
Rietveld designed the Zig-Zag Chair in 1934 and started the design of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which was finished after his death.
When the art academy in Amsterdam became part of the higher professional education system in 1968 and was given the status of an Academy for Fine Arts and Design, the name was changed to the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in honour of Rietveld.
Two software tools, both for code review, have been named after Gerrit Rietveld: Gerrit and Rietveld.
Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht
1924Metz & Co. in The Hague
Interior of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam
Red and Blue Chair
1917Dining Chair
1919Chair for P. J. elling
Cartridge (1922–24)
Wheelbarrow
1923Berlin Chair
1923Stool for children
1923Divan Table
1923Flat Stool (1923–24)
Chair
1926Music stand
1927Armchair for A. M. Hartog
1927Tubular Chair
1927Wouter Paap Armchair (1928–30)
Zig-zag Chair (1932–34)
(1883-1957)
(1889-1985)
