The ‘Schröderhuis’ is Rietveld’s most important architectonic design. It almost defies belief that this was his first commission to design a new house. Before that time he had designed a number of shop renovations and interiors, and he had acquired a bit of a name thanks to his revolutionary furniture pieces in the years 1918-1923. He was granted the assignment by Truus Schröder-Schräder. Her husband had died in 1923, leaving her with three children aged 11, 10 and 5. The house where they lived at the time, a stately nineteenth-century dwelling at Biltstraat in Utrecht, was too large and moreover did not suit the life she sought. Rietveld had renovated a room in this house in 1921, to her complete satisfaction. It probably emerged at that time how much their ideas and opinions converged. In 1924 she again called on Rietveld’s help, this time to find a new dwelling which he could then renovate. When this proved unsuccessful, Truus heeded Rietveld’s advice to have a new house built on a small plot of land on the edge of town.

From the outside, the house forms a striking contrast with the row of red brick houses along Prins Hendriklaan to which it is attached. The three facades are designed to form three-dimensional compositions of planes and lines in white, grey and black with red, blue and yellow highlights. Rietveld had started using these colours under influence of De Stijl. The spatial construction with horizontal and vertical surfaces is reminiscent of his experimental furniture designs of the preceding years.

The interior is hugely surprising. The ground floor has a fairly traditional layout with a small study, an atelier with storage space, a maid’s room and a large kitchen. From the small central hall, a three-stepped platform and a spiral staircase brings one to the large open living-annex-bedroom on the top floor. Here again, everything is painted in the colours of De Stijl. Wardrobes and beds are partly fixed in their place and incorporated into the colour and spatial composition. Sliding walls can turn the space into various separate rooms. The open space and colourful but otherwise sparingly decorated interior are not only revolutionary innovations in terms of style, but are also expressive of an entirely different conception of life and domesticity.