Mart (Martinus Adrianus) Siam
b. Purmerend, Holland, 1899;
d. Goldach, Switzerland, 1986.

Mart Siam was an underrated architect of the Heroic Period of the Modern Movement. He studied at the Dutch State School for Draughtsmanship (1917-19) and was employed by several local architects until 1922, when he travelled to Berlin and met Bruno Taut and El Lissitzky. In 1924 he returned to Switzerland, where he had previously established links, and worked with Karl MOSER in Zurich and A. Jetten in Thun. During this period he founded, with El Lissitzky, Hans Schmidt and Emil Roth, the avant-garde journal ABC. His Swiss-Dutch links were dominant in his life. In Holland he was a member of the De Stijl group with the architects Oud, Rietveld and Duiker and the painters Van Doesburg and Mondrian. He was also a prominent member of Opbouw. His most notable buildings were all of his early period and include the terrace houses at the weissenhof Werkbund Exhibition in Stuttgart (1927), where he also introduced his tubular steel cantilever chair; the ?Hellerhof? group in Frankfurt-am-Main: the old people’s home with Werner Moser and Ferdinand Kramer. The most important single contribution was his work as job architect for the Van Nelle factory at Rotterdam with the Brinkman and Van Der Vlugt studio (1925-31): it was the clarity of vision, precise planning and detailing of Mart Stam that made this the outstanding building of Dutch Rationalism. In 1927 he was working with Ernst MAY, and in 1928 he was present at the first CIAM Congress. At this period he taught briefly at the Bauhaus. The opportunities which were then presenting themselves in Russia attracted the European avant-garde and, in 1930, Stam together with Ernst May, Hannes Meyer and Hans Schmidt, travelled to Moscow, where they worked chiefly on urban planning, producing schemes for Magnitogorsk, Makejerka and Orsk, and Stam produced designs for the open-air theatre at Oeral. In 1934, the political climate in Russia was beginning to become oppressive, and Stam returned to Amsterdam. Subsequently he was Director of the Institute of Applied Art until 1948, when he took up the appointment of Director of the Academy of Figurative and Applied Art at Dresden. From 1950 to 1952 he directed the Academy of Fine Arts in East Berlin. He then returned to Amsterdam, where he practised until 1966; little is known of this period. During his last twenty years he lived a secluded life in Switzerland, but built there at least two modest houses in the local vernacular, one at Arcengo, Tessin (1966) and one at Hilterfingen (1969).