austin cubed: 09.22

9.24.2022

stair light, stair bright, first stair i see tonight...

One of the architect's signature details are lighted stair risers. And here they are! This is a really neat way to light the way, and it looks fantastic: superclean and modern. The photo also reveals the completion of the railing as well as the handrails.

I'm speaking at a water event in El Paso on Friday, so I'll hang out an extra day to drive up to Cloudcroft to check in on progress and enjoy a little mountain air.

9.19.2022

rietveld's berlin chair (and a bench!)

Another classic from Rietveld's oeuvre is the Berlin Chair, first conceived and built in 1923 for the "Juryfreie Kunstschau" (jury-free art show) in (you guessed it...): Berlin! The chair is a de Stijl masterpiece. I sat in a knock-off of one in Marfa, and it is more comfortable than it looks (but you would not want to spend a football game in it).

The two sets of plans below are from my How-to-Build-Reitveld-Furniture books.

An emerging theme with this Rietveld furniture is that much of it was reintroduced later, when the design world caught up (and history put his designs into context). His 1960 version of the chair put an angle in the arm rest in an almost quaint nod to comfort. I prefer that version I reckon.

The second design book I bought unexpectedly included a design for a bench I had never seen before. The book doesn't have a date, but says it was designed and built for the Fraenkel (Frenkel?) Family and that he designed a similar bench for the Rietveld-Schröder House.

A couple of web pages (with no supporting documention) tag the bench with 1930. The similar piece in the Rietveld-Schröder House is probably the piece here with the cushion on it:

Donald Judd (1928-1994), the American minimalist sculptor, has a similar piece:

So here's Rietveld's design according to the books I have:

This flickr site (where the previous two photos of this bench came from) has some details of the construction:

A weird thing about this design is that it seems to have been created for little people (or kids). The height at the seat is a mere 29.3 centimeters: about 11.5 inches. That is not old, fat dude friendly. I think the whole kit and kaboodle needs to be scaled up to a 40 centimeter bench height (which allows for a cushion). So to build this, everything should be multiplied by 1.365.

For our space, we need the mirror image. in other words:

The photos above have a different height for the long backing piece that extends above the seat. It's actually better visually (by my eye) at that shorter height. It could be that Rietveld improved the design when he reintroduced it later or that the plans in the book ain't quite right. I've not been able to find photos of the original piece, and the definitive book on his furniture runs $250.

9.11.2022

gerritt reitveld's Elling Sideboard

image via Christie's

In addition to designing (along with Truus Schröder) and building one of my favorite houses, Gerritt Rietveld designed and built furniture. In fact, he started his career in early Modernism in furniture. He wanted his designs to be simple and simple to build, at one point presenting plans for making furniture from shipping pallets. One of my fave pieces of his is his sideboard, sometime referred to as the Elling Sideboard, designed and first built in 1919. Piet Elling commissioned the piece for his apartment which, unfortunately, burned down, taking the original with it. Rietveld oversaw the reconstruction of the piece in 1952 and continued to build (or have it built) in the ensuing years. Casina makes a "Death Star" version with a price tag of ~$35,000.

The original in Elling's apartment in 1923 along with other Rietveld pieces. © Rietveld Schröderarchief, Centraal Museum Utrecht / Pictoright, Amsterdam

Casina's "Death Star" version.

Made of birch, much of the strength and structure sources from dowels and glue. The piece is airy and cloudlike with extended planes typical of the de Stijl Movement that influenced Modernism, particularly Mies van der Rohe. The piece itself, as well as de Stijl, was influenced to a degree by Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese furniture.

Since Rietveld was a little punk rock, he wanted to create designs for the people that could also be built by the people. Accordingly, there are a couple books, somewhat similar, that provide plans on how to build his furniture.

I had bought the one above but then could not find it, so I bought what I thought was a replacement but was a completely different version of the same book:

This turned out to be a happy accident because there are different pieces of furniture in the second version above. Go figure.

Since I am writing this post, in large part, to solicit a furniture maker to make this piece for us for the cabin, I have provided scans of the plans below. Enjoy!