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(b Semín, nr Pardubice, March 13, 1880; d Jičín, Sept 10, 1945).

Czech architect, designer, urban planner and teacher. In 1906 he completed his studies at the Academy of Applied Arts, Prague, under Jan Kotěra, in whose studio he worked until 1908. His earliest work was strikingly modern and rationalist in style, revealing a purity of expression in the use of reinforced concrete; for example the Wenke Department Store (1909–10), Jaroměř, was designed with a skeleton structure on which a lightweight, fully glazed wall was suspended to form the façade. In 1911, with Josef Chochol, Vlastislav Hofman (1884–1964), Pavel Janák and others, he became a founder-member of the Group of Plastic Artists, Prague, which sought to develop a more artistic approach to architecture; a year later he and Janák founded the Prague Art Workshops for the design of arts, crafts and furniture, and from 1914 he was a member of the Architects’ Club. Influenced by Janák, Gočár adopted the prismatic surface forms of ...

(b Amsterdam, Nov 24, 1884; d Amsterdam, Nov 24, 1923).

Dutch architect and furniture designer. He left secondary school before completing his final exams to work in the studio of Eduard Cuypers. There he met P. L. Kramer, who later became his friend and collaborator. De Klerk remained in Cuypers’s studio from 1898 to 1910, apart from a brief trip to London in 1906; during this period he also attended an evening course at the Industrieschool van de Maatschappij voor den Werkenden Stand. Both his employer and his teachers were sympathetic to the principles of the English Arts and Crafts Movement, and de Klerk was influenced by contemporary British architects, such as M. H. Baillie Scott. Study of the rural architecture of Denmark and Sweden is also apparent in his designs and woodwork. From these various sources de Klerk forged a highly personal style.

After returning to Amsterdam, de Klerk worked for a short time in various building firms. A notable commission from this period is the luxury block of flats on the Johannes Vermeerplein (...

(b Amsterdam, July 1, 1881; d Amsterdam, Feb 4, 1961).

Dutch architect and furniture designer. A son of an Amsterdam doctor, he did not have the usual formal training but attended evening classes at the Industrieschool in Amsterdam. Between 1903 and 1911 he worked in Eduard Cuypers’s office in Amsterdam, with a short interruption in 1906 when he assisted the Belgian architect Georges Hobé on a project at Namur. In Cuypers’s office he met Michel de Klerk and J. M. van der Meij, and with them he later formed the vanguard of the Amsterdam school. Kramer’s first commission as an independent architect was the building (1911–13; destr. 1940) for Minder Marinepersoneel (Minor marines) in Den Helder. This contained all the elements of his later work: asymmetrical planning, expressionist composition of masses and brick ornamentation. He was also involved with the design of the Scheepvaarthuis (Shipping house) (1912–16) in Amsterdam, which is regarded as the Amsterdam school’s manifesto; the main scheme was by ...

(b The Hague, Oct 4, 1885; d Amsterdam, 1989).

Dutch architect, writer, furniture designer and teacher . He trained in the offices of J. van Straaten (1897–9) and P. J. H. Cuypers (1900–04), and he became acquainted with K. P. C. de Bazel and J. L. Mathieu Lauweriks, the leaders of the Nieuwe Kunst movement. From 1905 to 1908 he worked in England in J. Groll’s office and attended evening classes at the Lambeth School of Art. He worked with L. M. Cordonnier first on the Vredespalais in The Hague and then from 1911 to 1914 in Lille. He returned to the Netherlands during World War I, entering architectural competitions and designing furniture and toys. He also wrote articles for architectural periodicals and in 1918 began directing Wendingen, the periodical of the Amsterdam school . In that year he visited Berlin, where he met the Expressionist architect Erich Mendelsohn and the critic Alfred Behne. He began to concentrate on producing utopian plans, such as the reorganization of Vondelpark (...