Day 10 [Utrecht Day 2]

Wow.  Another incredible day.  I awoke early (6:30 am) in order to get ready, have breakfast, and do some sight-seeing because I had checked the weather and it didn't look promising in the afternoon.  Additionally, I had booked a tour of the interior of the Rietveld-Schroder house (more on that soon) for noon, so I wanted to make sure I could be back in time for that.  Breakfast was good.  It was like most European breakfasts (or at least the ones we had in Italy), with bread, ham and cheese, jams and nutella, granola, yogurt, coffee.  And a boiled egg, which was strange but good, even though I made a huge mess with the shell. 

I had been debating on staying within the center of Utrecht but I decided to hop on a bus to visit De Utihof, the university area, which has a lot of contemporary architecture.  I am very glad I did.  There are some crazy buildings there, predominantly the Educatorium by Rem Koolhaas (rockstar Dutch architect based out of Rotterdam with his practice OMA - they also designed the recent architecture building for Cornell's campus); the university library by Weil Arets; and these fantastic prefab container units that serve as temporary housing for students.  I had a good visit there, then got the bus back to the hotel where I got ready for my tour.  I walked out to the Erasmuslaan area through the Wilhelmina park which was very nice.  There was a lot of construction right before the Rietveld house but then I finally arrived!  It was...magical. 

The house itself was smaller than I had imagined it in my head after seeing so many pictures of it in architecture lessons and books.  Of course, the same phenomena occurred when I visited the Barcelona Pavilion.  That's why I always say you don't know a building until you've experienced it.  You can look at photos all you want, but that's not how architecture is meant to be perceived.  Architecture is about interactions with humans and space, and, as Gerrit Rietveld would argue, architecture is the art of designing space, shaping space as a physical material.  Rietveld would go so far as to say that materials themselves don't matter (brick, stone, wood - which are the materials that the Schroder house was constructed with in 1922, traditional materials painted and surfaced although Rietveld would have preferred concrete but at the time that was too expensive). 

Though it is now a UNESCO landmark, the house itself has an interesting story.  It was designed for Truus Schroder-Schrader and her husband and three children.  She specifically asked for Rietveld who was an acquaintance of her husband and primarily a furniture designer at the time, and this became his first ever constructed house.  Truus Schroder and Gerrit Rietveld designed many of the components of the house together, and they really were kindred spirits.  Actually, after Mrs. Schroder's husband had passed away when she was only in her 30s, Rietveld actually moved into the house with her towards the end of his life.  Rietveld at that point had been a leader of the De Stijl movement, along with people like Theo van Doesburg, and Piet Mondrian (read: black/white, red-yellow-blue, and lots of right angles).  

Unfortunately, it was strictly forbidden (verboden!) to take pictures of the interior, but that's where the real magic happens.  The first floor is divided into rooms in a generally typical fashion.  Colors are used to indicate different functions, for example the vertical surfaces differ from the horizontal, which differ from where the hand would come into contact with a drawer or doorknob for example.  On the second level, however, everything changes completely due to the moving partitions.  This means that there is virtually no singular configuration to the rooms, as the three bedrooms can be closed off or opened up depending on what the needs were.  This was such a radical design for the time that it was said that the two young daughters at first didn't want to have friends over and denied living in "that crazy looking house." 

Anyway, actually being there, as I've said, brings everything together in a new light.  Literally.  After all those years of becoming familiar with both the architect and project, I can now say that I get it - in the way the architect intended.  It was a great moment for me, one where my inner architect geek started doing backflips. 

I also took a look at Erasmuslaan 9, a row of social housing also done by Rietveld, and right across the street from the Schroder house.  Apparently Truus bought the property so she could control what her view would be, and also to give Rietveld more opportunities to build.  Crazy.

I then went back to the hotel for a freshening up, as it had just started to rain.  I then headed right back out to the city center, where I visited the Centraal Museum (also currently featuring a Rietveld exhibition!) and also the Sonneberg Museum and Observatory.  The Centraal Museum was ridiculously large and interesting, with 11 separate exhibits.  Besides the Rietveld exhibit, there was interesting Utrecht-specific paintings in the Carravagist style, as well as landscapes and others.  There was also an exhibit of two contemporary painters, one being Jean-Michel Basquiat.  The only reason I know him is because Anthony Titus introduced us to him in my painting/architecture class.  It was all really compelling work.  On the other hand, the observatory is a very old building from the 1500s, and served as a bastion as well as the meteorological center for Utrecht, and is still a functioning observatory.  It was really cool to explore. 

At this point, I was getting really hungry so I headed in the Oorsprongpark area and decided to stop off for dinner right on the corner of the street my hotel occupies.  The place was called De Kust.  It had a lot of seafood on the menu, but they didn't have an English version so I can't tell you everything.  I ended up ordering the most delicious pappardelle pasta with butter and crème sauce with 'tiny lobsters' which kind of looked like baby shrimp but not, also with a variety of vegetables in the sauce such as zucchini and baby corn.  Let me tell you - I demolished that plate because I was so hungry, but there was a LOT of food there.  I was  basically the only one in the restaurant because it was a bit too early for European dinner-time, but soon after two other older women sat down at the table next to me, and eying my dish, decided to both go with that as well!  It was the best full dinner I've had in the Netherlands, and not because it was the only real dinner I've had.  

Right now I'm pretty tired, but I should get my stuff together to leave tomorrow.  I check out by 11am and then head out to Rotterdam!  It's crazy, I could probably have spent one or two more days here, but I got to see all of the things I wanted to and much more.