Home of Schroeder Gerrit Rietveld
1924
Kim Zwarts © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Pictoright Amsterdam
50 Prins Hendriklaan, Utrecht, Holland
© MidMod-Design
Gerrit Rietveld, the chief Dutch modernist architect, built this home for the widow Truus Schroeder-Schraeder and her three children, and lived there himself as well. It is often said that Rietveld and Truus Schroeder’s plan for the house is a three-dimensional realization of the principles of abstract painter Piet Mondrian. The house even more calls to mind the work of the Russian Suprematists—Malevich’s “arkhitektons” and Lissitzky’s “prouns.” What it certainly does not look like is the “normal” modernist house: too much color, too many details unrelated to function. Nonetheless, it is the predecessor of the modernist house. The Schroeder house is one of the daring early experiments on which the architecture of modernism was built.
Kim Zwarts © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Pictoright Amsterdam
Gerrit Rietveld: The Architect and Designer © Phaidon Press
Home of Konstantin Melnikov
1927 1929
Studio
Living room
Hallway © All photos by Igor Palmin
The photographs were made by Igor Palmin, while Victor Melnikov, the architect’s son, was alive. Viktor Melnikov is also the author of the majority of paintings and drawings that are in the house. Without a doubt, the Chayka hoover (issued since 1963) was his purchase as well.
Konstantin Melnikov brought this carpet from Paris in 1925.
All 20th-century architects built homes for themselves, all except Soviet architects, in whose country stand-alone residences ran against the powerful Socialist tide. How Melnikov managed to evade these constraints is a mystery and our good fortune that providence happened to smile on this wildest of all the dreamers of the Soviet avant-garde. The home is made up of two cylinders with honeycombed walls and a single bedroom for the entire family. The house is an architectural masterpiece, is celebrated worldwide and is one of the top attractions for foreign tourists to Moscow. But, for Russians, it is important not so much as an architectural wonder but as a cultural anomaly: a single-family home built during the era of the accursed “apartment question” with the inscription, “Konstantin Melnikov architect”, proudly displayed over the entrance and with an enormous, bright, cathedral-like studio on the third floor, all of it bespeaking Melnikov’s pride in a profession little recognized in the USSR, whose members were treated as anonymous functionaries of design institutes and slaves of the building industry.
Living room © All photos by Igor Palmin
10 Krivoarbatsky Lane, Moscow, Russia
Home of Walter Gropius
1938
Bedroom
© All photos by Library of Congress
Terrace
Hallway
Facade
68 Baker Bridge Road, Lincoln, Massachusetts, USA
Walter Gropius was one of the principal modernist architects. His move to the United States in the 1930s was an event of historic significance. Thereafter, the United States, not Europe, would lead the way in innovative architecture. In the US, Gropius taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He used his home as instructional material. It became a symbol of the new international style that had come to America from the old world and that drew fire from many quarters—ranging from Frank Lloyd Wright to Gropius’ angry neighbors.
Living room © All photos by Library of Congress
