Mart Stam

Mart Stam (August 5, 1899 – February 21, 1986) was a Dutch architect, urban planner, and furniture designer. Stam was extraordinarily well-connected, and his career intersects with important moments in the history of 20th-century European architecture, including chair design at the Bauhaus, the Weissenhof Estate, the Van Nelle Factory, an important modernist landmark building in Rotterdam, buildings for Ernst May's New Frankfurt housing project then to Russia with the idealistic May Brigade, to postwar reconstruction in Germany.

His style of design has been classified as New Objectivity, an art movement formed during the depression in 1920's Germany, as a counter-movement and an out growth of Expressionism.

Martinus Adrianus Stam was born in Purmerend, The Netherlands, on 5 August 1899 to a tax collector and his wife (no records are available of her career). He attended a local school in Purmerend, before training in Amsterdam at the Royal School for Advanced Studies (Rijksnormaalschool for Teekenonderwijzers) for two years between 1917 and 1919.

After qualifying in 1919, Stam began working as a draftsman with an architectural firm in Rotterdam. He boldly stated between his qualification and first career that "We have to change the world." The architectural firm was run by the architect Granpré Molière. Molière was a traditionalist, and had a different style of design to Stam, but the two worked together well, possibly because they were both Christians, and Stam was invited to work for Molière personally in his studio in Rotterdam.

However, in 1920, Stam was imprisoned for refusing to serve in the military (dienstweigeren), something which was compulsory in the Netherlands at that time. Those that refused to conscribe were imprisoned for the time period of which the service would take place. Fortunately, Stam was released in 1922, and later that year, created what has been said to be his first major achievement - in 1922, through a contest, he was appointed to draw up urban infrastructure plans for The Hague region. This was a standard plan in many senses, but the main striking feature, was that the majority of the roads, particularly in coastal areas, ran perpendicular to the beach. It is still not known why Stam chose to design them in that way.

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