Robert van 't Hoff
| Robert van 't Hoff | |
|---|---|
| Born |
November 5, 1887 Rotterdam, Netherlands |
| Died | April 25, 1979 (aged 91) New Milton, Hampshire, England |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Buildings | Villa Henny |
Robert van 't Hoff (November 5, 1887 – April 25, 1979), born Robbert van 't Hoff, was a Dutch architect and furniture designer. His Villa Henny, designed in 1914, was one of the earliest modernist houses and one of the first to be built out of reinforced concrete. From 1917 he was an influential member of the De Stijl movement.
Although he was born to a comfortable middle-class background, married a wealthy heiress, and for a while was able to subsidise the publication of the De Stijl journal, van 't Hoff was a member of the Communist Party of the Netherlands in the years following World War I. Following the failure of Pieter Jelles Troelstra's call for a socialist revolution in the Netherlands in 1919, van 't Hoff split from De Stijl's founder Theo van Doesburg and withdrew from artistic activity, declaring himself an "ex-architect" in 1922, and spending much of the rest of his life promoting experimental anarchist communities.
Van 't Hoff was born in Rotterdam, the son of an eminent bacteriologist, and grew up in comfortable and cultured middle class circumstances. His mother had an interest in the visual arts and was a friend of the painter Willem Witsen (Willem Arnoldus Witsen), while his father was a friend of the psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden. From 1898 Robert accompanied his parents on visits to van Eeden's utopian Walden commune near Bussum.
The family moved to Bilthoven in 1904. The following year Robert assisted with the building of a house for one of his aunts and decided to train as an architect.
In 1906, on the advice of an architect friend of his father's, van 't Hoff travelled to England to study architecture at the Birmingham School of Art, which had been a major centre of the Arts and Crafts Movement since its reorganisation by Edward R. Taylor in the 1880s. Studying under William Bidlake, he came under the influence of the theories of William Lethaby and the work of the Glasgow School, and worked in the progressive architectural practice of Herbert Tudor Buckland.
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