De Stijl or Neo plasticism

De Stijl Movement
• De Stijl, or The Style, is an art and design movement founded in Holland by painters and architects
around 1917. The movement strives to express universal concepts through elimination, reduction,
abstraction, simplification, and a dynamic asymmetrical balance of rectangles, planes, verticals,
horizontals, the primary colours i.e. black, white, and grey.
• Proponents of De Stijl sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order.
• Designers formulate a new language and vocabulary for architecture. To do this, they take the
traditional house apart, analyse it like an object, abstract it to eliminate traditional references, and
then reassemble it in a new way.
• The new form emphasizes the cube. It is not a solid box, but instead opens up from outside to
inside with solid and void relationships established through flat planes.
• They advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and
color; they simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions, and used only
primary colors along with black and white.
• This new plastic idea ignored the natural form and color. it found its expression in the abstraction
of form and color, that is to say, in the straight line and the clearly defined primary color.
• De Stijl allowed only primary colors and non-color’s , only squares and rectangles, only straight
and horizontal or vertical line.
• De Stijl was posited on the fundamental principle of the geometry of the straight line, the square,
and the rectangle, combined with a strong asymmetry

De Stijl Movement
ARCHITECTURAL CHARACTERS OF DE STIJL :
1. Typical Characteristics are a flat roof, asymmetry, geometric forms, white or gray walls
with details highlighted by primary colors.
2. Houses for individuals are the most important.
3. Compositions generally emphasize the separation of planes, the application of primary
colors, and the spatial relationship of solids to voids.
4. Rectangular shapes define the geometric repetition of windows, doors, and blocks of
color.
5. Window sizes vary on an individual building from large to small. They may be
arranged in patterns or one unit on a large
wall.
6. Flat roofs are typical, and distinctly
different from other structures.

De Stijl Movement
De Stijl Movement
Architects:-Gerrit Rietveld
Location :-Utrecht, The Netherlands
Project Year:- 1925
• Still as visionary and eccentric as it was when it was built in the 1920s, the Schroder House by Gerrit
Rietveld continues to impress architects and interior designers with its innovative solutions to
prominent design questions of its time.
• The flexibility of the interior spaces and the obviously planar quality of the house both give it an
edge that makes it distinguishable and unique on every level.
• The Schroder House is the only building that was designed in complete accordance with the De Stijl
style, which was marked by primary colors and pure ideas.

De Stijl Movement
• The two-story house contains a transformable kitchen/dining/living area, studio space and reading
room on the bottom, and the second floor contained bedrooms and storage space, only separated by
portable partitions.
• The flexibility of space meant that there was no hierarchical arrangement of rooms in the floor plan.
The collapsible walls upstairs positioned around a central staircase were designed to provide the
children with an option of pushing the partitions in during the day for an open play space and closing
them at night for private bedrooms.
• detail were well planned by Rietveld and was prominent in other areas of the design, like specific
paint colors to distinguish different spaces or functions. An interesting example of this is the front
door, where black paint is used because Rietveld anticipated it would be accessed the most and would
therefore be easily soiled.

De Stijl Movement
• Initially considered the outskirts of Utrecht, the lot on which the house is built opened up to only a
few views worth framing. It is obvious that the architect had previous experience making furniture,
especially when noticing the detail and functionality of the window screen, portable partitions, and
table made for the children.
• What makes the Schroder House an icon of the Modern Movement is its radical approach to design,
the use of space, and the purity of its concepts and ideas as represented in the De Stijl movement. Its
transformational quality of evenly matched spaces composed of independent planes perfectly met the
goals of the De Stijl movement.
• “As with his early chairs, Rietveld gave a new spatial meaning to the straight lines and rectangular
planes of the various architectural structural elements, slabs, posts and beams, which were composed
in a balanced ensemble.”
• The main structure of the house is of reinforced concrete slabs and steel profiles. Walls are made of
brick and plaster; window frames, doors, and floors were made from wood. To preserve the strict
design standards about intersecting planes, the windows are hinged so that they are only able to open
90 degrees to the wall.

De Stijl Movement
 Furniture:
Furniture and decorative arts are
conceived as one with the architecture
and interior design. Designers similarly
emphasize structure, construction,
proportion, and the balance between solid
and void relationships. They carefully
place individual parts to develop visual
balance and harmony so that all parts are
appreciated alone as well as in context
with the whole furniture piece.
1. Chairs and tables are the most
important conveyors of concepts.
2. Furniture complements the
architectonic character of an interior
through its emphasis on straight lines,
rectangular planes, and geometric forms.

De Stijl Movement
Symbols and Motifs:
There are no decorative motifs in De Stijl design. Instead, beauty evolves from simple,
unadorned surfaces arranged in geometric relationships and from construction
detailing.
Decorative Arts:
Decorative arts are limited in De Stijl houses. Artwork is prohibited because the house
itself is a piece of art. Few designers create decorative arts.

De Stijl Movement