This Dutch house is a postmodern masterpiece, and it’s now for sale

When it comes to architecture and design, the Netherlands might more readily evoke contemporary imagery – the new-millennium Rotterdam of OMA, MVRDV and UNStudio, or at most the structuralist-brutalist modernism of Aldo van Eyck and Jaap Bakema. Yet there is an ironic and fundamentally postmodern line that deserves rediscovery, and would be unfair to overlook. After all, without it much of that new-millennium aesthetic might not have emerged; just think of Delirious New York by Rem Koolhaas. Mart Van Schijndel was one of the champions of that ironic line, now remembered as one of the few Dutch architects to openly embrace postmodernism. In the late 1980s, he embarked on what every architect knows can be a perilous undertaking: designing one’s own home. Instead of disaster, the Van Schijndel House became the ultimate firework display, merging the idea of postmodern dwelling with that of an architect’s self-designed home. It manages to be iconic while playing on a complexity composed entirely of nuances.

It begins in disguise. The house conceals itself from the street in central Utrecht where it stands; the real architectural intervention must be sought within the plot. And there the fireworks erupt: a festival of abstract and ironic geometric compositions, stepped lines and bands of color – organized around an irregular living area and a prominent open staircase – combined with some of the most advanced and daring technological experiments of its time.

Van Schijndel was fascinated by the poetics of another great Utrecht designer, Gerrit Rietveld, and his Schröder House, the true manifesto of Neoplasticism, with its deconstructed glazed corners. He sought to reinterpret it, but here comes the postmodern twist: this time, the glazed corners facing the patio are acute, not orthogonal. The window frames had to open toward the patio, into the corner itself. To make this possible, one panel performs a slight lateral shift before rotating, preventing it from colliding with the other. Elsewhere, silicone seals in several doors and built-in furniture fronts were designed to function as pivots, eliminating conventional metal hardware.

Color study is another reason this house stands as a postmodern masterpiece, though not in the overt way of Charles Moore’s Piazza d’Italia in New Orleans. Here too, Van Schijndel avoids immediacy, much like in his technological solutions. Inside, everything appears white at first glance, yet the reality is a calibrated system of half-tones designed to interact with light throughout the day. Morning spaces shift toward yellow for a composed energy; afternoon areas, such as the staircase, take on cool lavender hues; sunset brings white, green or gray. A soft pink lends warmth to rooms without direct sunlight. The furnishings and objects were also conceived by the architect, evolving alongside the rhythms of living. Van Schijndel moved into the house in 1992 and gradually developed the interiors, completing them between 1995 and 1996. In 1995, the house was awarded the Rietveld Prize, as to further seal the project’s declared lineage of inspiration.

The Van Schijndel House is now on the market, after becoming accessible to visitors through its inclusion in the Iconic Houses network (alongside Gaudí’s La Pedrera, Wright’s Fallingwater, Le Corbusier’s Maison La Roche and Cap Moderne with Eileen Gray’s E-1027, among others). And although, as Robert Venturi could suggest, the postmodern idea of monument is fluid – hanging a sign reading “I am a monument” on any building might be enough – this house in the heart of Utrecht is a contemporary monument not only because it is alive, but because it opens a window onto a precious niche of contemporary architecture. One can only hope that whoever cares for it in the years to come will continue to share its story and history.