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Schroder House . A minifig scale model of Gerrit Rietveld's masterpiece, built in Utrecht, Holland, in 1924. .
I've wanted to build this for a long time. Sited on the end of an innocuous terrace, it's an explosion of creativity that's now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
It was built for a Mrs Schroder, a young widow with three young children and it proved to be a highly flexible and habitable family house. Mrs Schroder lived there for the next 60 years, until her death in 1985. It's probably safe to assume she liked it. It's now a museum.
My first thought on interpreting this was to do it in the same scale as my Doll's House , but I soon realized it would become something of a SHIP, so I changed tack and did it minifig scale.
I'll shut up for a bit (yay!) and let some detail pics do the talking...
Builder Nick in landscaping shock.... finally got some green! (yeah, I can't shut up for long...)
Those half pins you can see are holding on the upside down tiles that form the top of the upper window frames.
Upstairs, it's all one big open space, apart from the bathroom.
That piano is a little big, but I couldn't resist. The chair is an interpretation of Rietveld's famous yellow/red/blue chair, without the yellow...
Living area with funky sofa...
The walls are moving...
To form a living room and three bedrooms with the folding screens closed.
Downstairs, the plan is more conventional, divided into a kitchen, toilet, hallway, bedroom, studio, reading room and workroom. This was done to satisfy Dutch building regulations at the time.
Rietveld at work in the studio - the painting is Yellow/Red/Blue by Wassily Kandinsky, a friend of his who taught at the Bauhaus, which Rietveld visited often. The colours he used in the house come from Piet Mondrian's paintings. Since the Lego yellow, red and blue shades match perfectly, perhaps Lego did the same...
The spiral staircase in the centre of the house...
Shown here with upper floor module and roof removed...
... which slot back together nicely. When I was researching this build, I came across this by Jan-Albert van Ree and was deeply impressed. I deliberately didn't refer back to it until I completed mine, but it's overall look was an influence.
That funky (possibly..) furniture.
And the minifig scale grand piano. The lid does close, but I like it open.
Play us out, Mrs S.!
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