Gerrit Rietveld: Wealth of Sobriety

The Center for Architecture is excited to present Gerrit Rietveld: Wealth of Sobriety, opening Thursday, May 7, 2026. Curated by Arjan Bronkhorst and Barry Bergdoll, Hon. AIANY, this exhibition showcases a selection of projects from Bronkhorst’s 2018 photography volume of the same name, revealing stories about the lesser-known houses by Dutch architect and furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld (1888–1964).

“Rietveld was unwavering when it came to the aesthetic design of his houses,” said Arjan Bronkhorst. “As a photographer, I am inspired by the clarity of Rietveld's designs and the sober genius of his interiors.” The Dutch photographer spent two years tracking down the houses of Rietveld, a celebrated architect and designer who built almost 100 houses, largely in the Netherlands. His Schröder House from 1924 in Utrecht is world-famous, an icon of the De Stijl movement, and featured on UNESCO’s list of world heritage sites. Yet little is known about his other houses. Rietveld began his career as a furniture maker, and his early 20th-century Red and Blue and Zig-Zag chairs became icons of Dutch design. Later, when he began his architectural career, these principles carried through into his built work, with most of his houses expressing concepts of the Nieuwe Bouwen movement—design based on functionality, without unnecessary embellishments. 

This restrained philosophy is central to Rietveld’s work: “We could make such progress if people would reject extravagance … and would find joy in the wealth of sobriety,” he said late in his career. Only a limited number of clients could deal with this “wealth of sobriety” and had the courage to invite Rietveld to design an avant-garde house for them. His clients were for the most part members of the intellectual class: artists, designers, musicians, doctors, professors. Even though his heart lay in social housing, his body of work consists largely of private villas. A section of the exhibition will focus on the owners of a selection of homes, sharing insight into what it means to live in Rietveld’s creations. 

"I was immediately captured by the resonance between Rietveld's architecture and Bronkhorst's photography,” said Barry Bergdoll. “Bronkhorst's photographs bring us into contact with the world of Rietveld owners who have carefully protected his many residential designs." 

Bronkhorst’s book contains almost 400 photographs and tells the story of Rietveld and his encounters with clients. Of the 20 houses documented in the book, this exhibition will feature photos of 14, constructed from 1924 until 1963, including a house in America—the only one designed by Rietveld outside of the Netherlands. Commissioned and built by Professor Parkhurst in 1961, very little had been known about the Ohio project prior to Bronkhorst’s photography. Rietveld himself had never visited the house, in fact, because he was banned from entering the United States owing to his alleged communist sympathies. 

While the book is organized chronologically by project, Bergdoll and Bronkhorst’s exhibition creates a visual narrative, juxtaposing details from different houses and inviting visitors into Rietveld’s world through salient aesthetic attributes and patterns. “To see Rietveld's architecture, exterior, and interior, through the lens of Bronkhort’s camera is to enter into dialogue with the geometric composition of his spaces, but also to see patterns both within a space and across a career,” said Bergdoll. “If Rietveld praised the ‘wealth of sobriety,’ it has been a Rietveldian exercise for us together to distill a sampling of the hundreds of photographs Bronkhorst has taken to craft a vision of the language of the Dutch modernist's design sensibility.” 

The exhibition will be on view May 7 through September 2 in the Center for Architecture’s HLW Gallery and Kohn Pedersen Fox Gallery.