Heartwood & Piet Mondrian

The team at Rural Office were inspired by a wide range of references for the Heartwood design.

The abstract works of Piet Mondrian are an important reference. 

He challenges viewers to rethink their perceptions, with a ‘different kind of harmony.’

The Heartwood is a living sculpture that captures your gaze and imagination. The detailed patterns of the roof reveals glimpses of the ancient oak canopy and skies above. 

Mondrian’s work is about balance and simplicity. But that does not mean simple repetition and proportional symmetry. He loved jazz and there’s a sense of play in his work. 

Here the curator of the Mondrian show at the Tate liverpool, Michael White, explains more,

“Often you’ll read that Mondrian’s painting is about balance. It’s true that he thought hard about the relationship between one area of a painting and another, but that only explains part of it. Mondrian avoided symmetry. He frequently placed larger areas of colour on one side of the canvas or the other, and the centres are often without much feature.

In 1920, Mondrian had a disagreement about this with a fellow artist over one of his paintings,

‘He said that [the painting] wasn’t balanced and that the yellow was disharmonious against the red, etc…

I then told him that we were looking for a different harmony; he said there was only one.”