CAFx Gerrit Rietveld’s Houses

A hundred years ago, the iconic Rietveld Schröder House - built on the outskirts of Utrecht - marked the beginning of Gerrit Rietveld’s career as an architect. It turned the ideas behind his Red-Blue Chair into architecture and acted as a testament to his artistic and romantic relationship with the owner of the house, Truus Schröder. To Rietveld, Schröder was much more than a client: an artistic collaborator and a motivational force for experimentation.

Seventy-five years after the construction of this house, it was the first residential house ever to be admitted to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2000. And it became a blueprint for ideas that Rietveld would pursue for the rest of his career.

Many would say that Rietveld would never build anything so exceptional and avant-gardistic after that first project. Controversial to present-day ideals, Rietveld wanted the house torn down after 50 years, but it still stands as a testament to his important contribution to the De Stijl movement and modernism in general.

The film explores Rietveld’s work from the perspective of Truus’s love for the man and his work, documented in an audio interview from 1982, and in interviews with her loved ones.