UTRECHT, NETHERLANDS.- The Centraal Museum presents "ideal!living in the Centraal Museum," on view through January 12, 2003. The Centraal Museum will be devoted to ‘ideal!living’, the first of a series of thematic exhibitions in which the Centraal Museum will turn the spotlight on lifestyle and fashion. ‘ideal!living’ is a multifaceted exhibition, featuring not only the designs of Rietveld, but also the ‘democratic design’ of IKEA and the 17th century dolls house of Petronella de la Court. In other words, it provides a comprehensive and surprising vision of homes and home furnishing down the centuries and a look at where we are now.

 

The Utrecht-born architect and furniture maker Gerrit Rietveld (1888 – 1964) plays an important role in ‘ideal!living’. Rietveld’s designs were informed by strong social convictions. One of his guiding principles was ‘mass production to benefit everyone’. He wanted his designs to be cheap and simple to produce so that they could be accessible to a large public with respect to price and design. But in practice he had little success: at that time industry was not capable of producing his designs and the public was not ready to accept them. It was only much later that his ideas were put into practice by others. Thus IKEA advertises under the slogan ‘democratic design’: furniture that really is for everyone. What happened again and again during the last century was that a small group of pioneers laid the groundwork but that their successors -- the realistic salespeople – were the ones who succeeded in translating their designs for a broad public. In ‘ideal!living’ this tension is central: we set Rietveld, Gispen and Miles van der Rohe alongside IKEA, Jan des Bouvrie, Bruynzeel and Droog Design.