, Culemborg, The Netherlands
national BV
tesy of Gispen Inter
Cour
Left Advertisement for the stackable and linkable Mondial chair, showing it with and without armrest.
Right Advertisement for Artifort armchairs No. 142 and No. 143, from Goed Wonen (‘Good Living’) magazine, with reference to the use
of both chairs in the Ideal Apartment of the Modern Living department. These were displayed together with a four-seater variant of
No. 143, produced exclusively for Expo 58 (see p. 72). The Artifort chairs, seemingly derived from armchairs Rietveld designed in 1937
and 1953, were far less innovative than the Mondial chair and strangely voluminous in comparison.
Opposite The textiles manufacturers, the board of the Dutch pavilion foundation and the press were horrified by the textiles display. It
was ordered that major changes be made to the exhibit. Photographs taken from the same angle early (top) and later (bottom) during
Expo 58 show that most of the original display material was replaced by traditional mannequins, while part of the plastered wire mesh
was torn down. The flooring of natural materials on the podia was replaced by wood parquet.
realized, and after the architect’s death in 1964, the sketches was altered. The Mondial and the Artifort chairs had only limited
disappeared into the Rietveld archives. Rediscovered recently, production runs. The commission to design the Philips pavilion
the drawings show a tent-like structure with large pictorial and was frustrated by Le Corbusier. But Rietveld’s work for Expo 58
textual elements on the walls. These elements were clearly influ- deserves appreciation, if only because late in his career, when he
enced by Jan Bons, whom Rietveld had commissioned in 1952 might justifiably have rested on his laurels, Rietveld bravely and
to design an immense mural for the façade of the exhibition open-mindedly explored unexpected and uncharted territory. n
hall for the exhibit “Así es Holanda” (This is Holland) in Mexico
City. Bons had used large graphic elements to refer to the exhibi- Peter Wever is a self-taught art historian from the Netherlands.
tors, including Philips, located behind the decorated façade. He has written about 1950s design and the work of Gerrit Rietveld,
Interestingly, the Philips pavilion designed by Le Corbusier and Le Corbusier and Karel Appel, among others. He is the primary
his assistant Iannis Xenakis is also a tent-like structure. Rietveld author of Dichtbij klopt het hart der wereld. Nederland op de
once said that he considered Le Corbusier’s pavilion to be of Expo 58 (Nearby beats the heart of the world. The Netherlands
high promotional but low architectural value; his opinion, how- at Expo 58). André Koch is an associate professor in the art history
ever, contrasts with wide appreciation for the pavilion and recent department at Leyden University, the Netherlands, specializing in
efforts to reconstruct it. 20th-century Dutch decorative arts and interior design. He has
While the Mondial chair has been described as the fulfillment written several books, including a PhD thesis on Willem Gispen
of Rietveld’s ideal to “make life easier, to relieve it of things that and Struck by Lighting, on lighting for the domestic interior in
are superfluous,” the architect’s contribution to Expo 58 can hardly 20th-century Europe.
be considered a success story. His influence on the overall design
of the Dutch pavilion was limited. Little attention was paid to
The authors thank Anneliek Holland for her work on the illustra-
the Modern Living department. The controversial textile display
tions for this feature.
58 www.modernismmagazine.com
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