I really enjoyed visiting this site; it was my favourite World heritage site in the Netherlands. Twentieth century/ Modern architecture has turned into something of a special area of interest for me and as such this house really impressed me.

One of the first things that strikes you about the house is how small it actually is, and also how radically different it is from the other houses on the road. In fact I would suggest that this is one of/ if not the smallest world heritage site, defiantly the smallest I have visited.

I did a little bit of background reading before my visit to get some insight into the De Stijl movement, which produced the exceptionally clear but somewhat Utopian principles from which this house developed.

Rietveld was a carpenter by trade and is famous for the stools he created; especially the Red and Blue Stool, there are many criticisms’s of these though as being more sculptures than practical objects. They are seen as Utopian as the straights lines and angels are not designed for a human body, but for an ideal of what the body should be. I was expecting the house to be very similar; however the very close collaboration between the architect and client has led to this being a hugely practical house. The huge amount of ingenious small details and contraptions are the result of Rietveld’s background as a carpenter making everyday items and the need to make the house a practical machine for living in, not just a sculptural space.

I have visited a quite a few architecturally ‘important’ houses built in the last 150 years and it was nice to have points of comparison. The houses designed by Horta in Brussels were built only 20 years before in a similar area of Europe and yet they could not be more different, the horrors of the First World War had brought an end to the ornate decoration of Art Nouveau and De Stijl led the way in rejecting ornament using only primary colours. De Stijl was a fore runner to the Bauhaus and when comparing the Tugendhat Villa (Mies van der Rohe) the finishing in Rietveld’s house is not as clinical and developed, however the practical nature of the house is much greater than it is in Mies’ masterwork.

The house is on the outskirts of Utrecht, which is actually a very charming city and well worth a visit. There are great rail links to most places in the Netherlands, 35 mins to Amsterdam, and a bus that runs to Kinderdijk 30 minutes past the hour from the station.

To view inside the house you have to go to the Centraal Museum, (you will NOT be able to get inside if you go straight to the house itself). The entrance fee is very high €16, it does however give pay for an excellent guided tour of the house, entrance to another Rietveld designed apartment, return travel from the museum to the house, entrance to the Centraal museum, and a cup of tea/coffee at the museum.

Despite the high entrance fee we really enjoyed this site and even if you are not a big devote of Modernist architecture it is worth the time to see inside, the huge amount of ingenious small details are enough to keep most people entertained. It is a really important monument to an influential movement in Modernist thought.