i read "The Rietveld Schröder House"

"The Rietveld Schröder House"
作者：Paul Overy, Lenneke Buller, Frank den Oudsten, Bertus Mulder
類別：Architecture

******
'Interview with Truus Schröder'
by Lenneke Buller, Frank den Oudsten.
pp. 92 -93.

Schröder: [...] He enjoyed talking with me. But sometimes, if I said, 'Yes, but Rietveld, if you put it like that people won't understand you', he would reply, 'Then it's not for them'. And then he wouldn't change it.

L & F: Would that be typical of Rietveld, such a reaction?
Schröder: Yes. I remember for example that Charley Toorop once said: "Rietveld, you know those chairs of yours, I'm always banging my ankles on them'. To which Rietveld replied, 'Sorry about that Charley, but it's other people who deserve to give their ankles a good bang on those chairs, not you'. But with the implication: there are some people it would certainly be good for. Yes indeed!

L & F: You not only worked on projects with Rietveld, you also had a very close friendship with him up until his death. What was it in his character that appealed to you?
Schröder: I was captivated by Rietveld's ideas, I loved his attitude to life. Everything he did was so solid. You might say, it was all so flimsy, but no, it was so meticulous. And for me that went together with Rietveld's idea that it was vital to experience reality through the senses.
Yes, and his theory of 'sobriety', that appealed to me greatly. I needed that very badly, I wasn't a very sober person. But he was, and in two ways: there was something uncomplicated that was very characteristic of him, and then as well -- what he also described in that speech he gave in Delft -- never to live in a way that harms something else. You can't actually avoid, but try to do it as little as possible. That was a beautiful speech. Some people were really carried away by it, thought of course there were others who thought it was overdone.


'The Restoration of the Rietveld Schröder House'
by Bertus Mulder.
p. 120.

The Spatial Structure of the House
In 1944, Rietveld wrote in a reflection on art:
'Tagore says concerning art: "by limiting the illimitable, truth becomes reality." The is the simple reality, neither ennobled nor spiritualized, that eh artist constructs for us a part of our awareness. Art is the clearest form of reality. The painter teaches us to experience reality by defining colours, the sculptor by defining materials, and the architect by defining space. Although in the architect's case the material and construction are essential, the space in, between, and around the solid form is of primary importance'.
******

========
for some, not for all
sap 18.10.2009