“What really intrigues us about Rietveld’s work is that, even as he was designing, he wondered how he could turn everyday living into a celebration. He achieved this first and foremost by seeking out fascinating relationships between the building and the outside world, for instance by making the most of the topographical conditions and either drawing the landscape in or, conversely, keeping it at a distance. Although he never shied away from experimentation, he created very homely homes tailored to the client’s needs. No doubt thanks to his background as a cabinetmaker, Rietveld mastered the art of making small moments feel grand in an unpretentious way. The entrance hall in the photograph is more than a functional spatial divider; it establishes distinctive physical (visual) relationships with the surrounding spaces, yet through the subtle use of a split-level and walls featuring patterned glass panels that bring light deep into the home, not everything is revealed at once. The spaciousness of the hallway means it can be used by the children as a play area.

We find Rietveld’s ambition to create a ‘celebration of living’ through the integration of landscape, architecture and furniture design highly inspiring for our own design practice. After all, within the often necessary compactness that the urban context typically imposes on us, we must strive to seek out moments of generosity through small gestures. In our designs, we aim to organise the programme into a spatial system of horizontal and vertical views that seek a balance between connection and maintaining distance. This applies to our own office, which came about through the thorough renovation of a mundane terraced house with few spatial qualities, but equally to the new school building Het Hinkelpad, which we will soon be realising in Berchem.”