Richard Hutten in the Sonneveld House

The Sonneveld House, built in 1933 in Rotterdam, is one of the best-preserved houses of the Nieuwe Bouwen style. The renowned Rotterdam designer Richard Hutten was invited by Het Nieuwe Instituut to respond to the design of this house museum. This confrontation with current design practice positions Sonneveld House within the contemporary design scene. Hutten’s interventions form part of the revitalisation of the Sonneveld House, in which personal objects and design from the 1930s added to the house lend it more atmosphere and character.

As guest curator, Richard Hutten respects the original interior while at the same time inserting examples of his own work or making almost invisible alterations to the interior. Hutten: “For me the Sonneveld House is an icon, a highlight of modernism and relevant to this day. My idea is to introduce some dynamism into this serious and static building with a number of major and minor interventions. These add another layer to the existing situation, yet they are also connected to it. Light or even banal in places, more philosophical and reflective elsewhere, the best interventions combine extremes.”

Richard Hutten (1967) has been one of the leading designers in the Netherlands for over twenty years. After graduating from Design Academy Eindhoven in 1991, he immediately set up his own design studio where he started to work on furniture, products, interiors and exhibitions. In that period he also became involved in the newly established label Droog Design, which laid the foundation for the international success of Dutch Design. While some of his colleagues limited themselves to conceptual work, Hutten also focused on the functionality and producibility of his pieces. For some years now he has been creative director of Gispen, the furniture manufacturer that was so closely involved in the interior of the Sonneveld House back in the 1930s.