Around 1900 the American engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) used time and motion studies to analyse factory production processes in an attempt to improve productivity through ‘scientific management’. Christine Frederick (1883-1970) was the first to apply his ideas about efficiency to the home. In her book The New Houskeeping (1913), published in the Netherlands in 1928 under the title De denkende huisvrouw (The Conscientious Housewife), she analysed everyday household

Het Nieuwe Instituut is built on what was once the so-called ‘Land van Hoboken’, a 56-hectare estate of mostly grassland: a green oasis in the middle of the city. The Sonnevelds had their new house built on the edge of this estate on a piece of land earmarked for a villa park. The peaceful, rural atmosphere provided the idea location for a villa. The Heemraadssingel, where the Sonnevelds lived before moving to the Jongkindstraat, was in a chic neighbourhood inhabited by doctors,

The garage at Sonneveld House has room for two cars. The family drove expensive American cars: Mr Sonneveld initially had a Plymouth and later a Chevrolet and Mrs Sonneveld had a Packard convertible. Their choice of cars reflected their American taste. Mr Sonneveld had a chauffeur, who came to the house almost every day to drive him to the Van Nelle Factory. Mrs Sonneveld drove herself; she was the first woman in Rotterdam with he own car.Unlike larger European countries, there was no

Even before the First World War Rotterdam’s ambition was to be not only the world’s largest port but also a beautiful and dynamic city of culture. Alfred Zimmerman (1869-1939), mayor of Rotterdam from 1906 to 1923, believed that too much effort had been devoted to the expansion of the harbours at the expense of building a monumental city centre. In the interwar years Rotterdam became Western Europe’s principal docking point and the economic motor of the Netherlands. But there

The Netherlands did not play a role in the development of international fashion. Traditionally Paris always set the trend. However, Hollywood’s influence from the 1920s onwards meant that America played an increasingly important role.The relatively small circle of Dutch women who could afford haute couture bought their clothes in Paris or, like the Sonnevelds, had their seamstress copy Parisian patterns. From the beginning of the twentieth century there were Dutch fashion houses, such as

Sonneveld House has no fewer than twelve telephones: two for external calls and ten for internal calls. Because the internal and external systems were completely separate, Mr and Mrs Sonneveld had two telephones in their bedroom: one for internal calls and one for external calls. In the 1930s renting a telephone line was expensive at almost a hundred guilders a year, excluding the price of calls. For the Sonnevelds, however, a telephone was an essential part of modern living. Mr Sonneveld had to

The Sonneveld family could listen to the radio throughout the house. The sound system, built into the sofa in the studio, was connected to other rooms in the house, each of which had a speaker, enabling the family to listen to the music selected in the studio all over the house.The first radio broadcast in the Netherlands took place on 6 November 1919. In 1923 the NSF (Nederlands Seintoestellen Fabriek) began the HDO or Hilversumsche Draadloze Omroep (Hilversum Wireless Broadcasting Company). In

In the bookcase above Gé’s bed is a copy of Pommie (1934), written and illustrated by Rie Cramer. We do not know for certain whether Gé, the Sonnevelds’ younger daughter, who was thirteen when the house was completed, actually read this book but it is certainly not inconceivable. Photographs of Sonneveld House show that the girls read a great deal: the studio was full of books.  The most beautiful picture books were published in the Netherlands in the years before the Second

Gispen presented it products in printed catalogues. The company also had showrooms in the Netherlands and abroad – in Rotterdam from 1930 to 1938 at Mauritsweg 37 – from which it sold directly to customers. Each catalogue contains a list of companies or institutions that had purchased furniture or lighting from Gispen. In the 1930 catalogue the majority of clients were from Rotterdam. However, the domestic market was limited: Gispen’s lamps were too expensive for the average