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.