Mart Stam

A self-taught Dutch architect, urban planner and furniture designer; one of the founders of the international ideological association C.I.A.M.; he worked for Hans Poelzig and Bruno Taut’s studios and was the director of the School of Industrial Design in Amsterdam and later the rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden, as well as the director of the Berlin Art Institute. He was the only foreign architect to work on the Baba estate, where he designed a villa for the builder Palička and his wife Emílie, who discovered his work at the Stuttgart Exhibition in 1927. He designed the iconic dining chair for Thonet.

1917-1919
studied at the Amsterdam University of the Arts

1919
worked in the architectural studio of Marinus Jan Granpré Moliér, Pieter Verhagen and Albert J. T. Kok in Rotterdam

1920-1922
imprisoned for refusing to perform military service

1922
worked on the Hague building plan
went to Berlin, cooperated with Max Taut and El Lissitzky

1923
co-founder of the architectural magazine ABC in Zurich

1923-1924
worked in the architectural studio of Karel Moser in Zurich

1925-1928
member of the Dutch group of architects called “De 8”, later renamed as “De 8 en Opbouw”

1926-1927
worked in the architectural studio of Brinkman and Van der Vlugt in Rotterdam 1927

1928-1930
worked in Frankfurt am Main on the “New Frankfurt” housing projects

1931-1934
architect and urbanist in the Soviet Union in Ernst May’s working group (urban projects)

1935-1948
independent architect in Amsterdam

1939-1948
Director of Amsterdam House of Arts & Crafts

1948-1952
professor at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts

1950-1952
Director of the Weißensee Academy of Art in Berlin

1953
return to Amsterdam

1966
relocation to Switzerland

Significant Works

1926
steel-tube armchair

1926-30
Van Nelle Factory Rotterdam (in cooperation with the architectural studio of Brinkman and Van der Vlugt)

1927
triple villa, Weissenhof housing estate, Stuttgart

1929-1932
Hellerhof housing estate, Frankfurt

1932
house of Emilie and Jiří Palička, Baba, Prague-Dejvice (in cooperation with Jiří Palička)

1935
terraced houses, Amsterdam

1932 house of Emilie and Jiří Palička, Baba, Prague-Dejvice (in cooperation with Jiří Palička)