Robert van 't Hoff (November 5, 1887 – April 25, 1979), born Robbert van 't Hoff, was a Dutch

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

and furniture designer. His ''Villa Henny'', designed in 1914, was one of the earliest

modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

houses and one of the first to be built out of reinforced concrete. From 1917 he was an influential member of the ''

De Stijl ''De Stijl'' (; ), Dutch for "The Style", also known as Neoplasticism, was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 in Leiden. De Stijl consisted of artists and architects. In a more narrow sense, the term ''De Stijl'' is used to refer to a body ...

'' 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 The Communist Party of the Netherlands ( nl, Communistische Partij Nederland, , CPN) was a Dutch communist party. The party was founded in 1909 as the Social-Democratic Party (SDP) and merged with the Pacifist Socialist Party, the Political Part ...

in the years following

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Following the failure of

Pieter Jelles Troelstra Pieter Jelles Troelstra (20 April 1860 – 12 May 1930) was a Dutch lawyer, journalist and politician active in the socialist workers' movement. He is most remembered for his fight for universal suffrage and his failed call for revolution at the ...

's call for a socialist revolution in the Netherlands in 1919, van 't Hoff split from ''De Stijls founder

Theo van Doesburg Theo van Doesburg (, 30 August 1883 – 7 March 1931) was a Dutch artist, who practiced painting, writing, poetry and architecture. He is best known as the founder and leader of De Stijl. He was married to artist, pianist and choreographer Nell ...

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.

Life

Early life and education

Van 't Hoff was born in

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"Ne ...

, the son of an eminent

bacteriologist A bacteriologist is a microbiologist, or similarly trained professional, in bacteriology -- a subdivision of microbiology that studies bacteria, typically pathogenic ones. Bacteriologists are interested in studying and learning about bacteria, ...

, 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 Frederik Willem van Eeden (3 April 1860, Haarlem – 16 June 1932, Bussum) was a late 19th-century and early 20th-century Dutch writer and psychiatrist. He was a leading member of the Tachtigers and the Significs Group, and had top billing a ...

. From 1898 Robert accompanied his parents on visits to van Eeden's utopian ''Walden'' commune near

Bussum Bussum () is a commuter town and former municipality in the Gooi region in the south east of the province of North Holland in the Netherlands near Hilversum. Since 2016, Bussum has been part of the new municipality of Gooise Meren. Bussum had ...

. The family moved to

Bilthoven Bilthoven is a village in the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is a part of the municipality of De Bilt. It has a railway station with connections to Utrecht, Amersfoort and Baarn. It is home to the Netherlands National Institute for Public Health a ...

in 1904. The following year Robert assisted with the building of a house for one of his aunts and decided to train as an

. In 1906, on the advice of an architect friend of his father's, van 't Hoff travelled to

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

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 __NOTOC__ Edward Richard Taylor RBSA (14 June 1838 – 11 January 1911) was an English artist and educator. He painted in both oils and watercolours. He became a member of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists in 1879. Biography Taylor ta ...

in the 1880s. Studying under

William Bidlake William Henry Bidlake MA, FRIBA (12 May 1861 – 6 April 1938) was a British architect, a leading figure of the Arts and Crafts movement in Birmingham and Director of the School of Architecture at Birmingham School of Art from 1919 until 1924. ...

, he came under the influence of the theories of

William Lethaby William Richard Lethaby (18 January 1857 – 17 July 1931) was an English architect and architectural historian whose ideas were highly influential on the late Arts and Crafts and early Modern movements in architecture, and in the fields of co ...

and the work of the

Glasgow School The Glasgow School was a circle of influential artists and designers that began to coalesce in Glasgow, Scotland in the 1870s, and flourished from the 1890s to around 1910. Representative groups included The Four (also known as the Spook School ...

, and worked in the progressive architectural practice of

Herbert Tudor Buckland Herbert Tudor Buckland (20 November 1869 – 1951) was a British architect, best known for his seminal Arts and Crafts houses (several of which, including his own at Edgbaston, Birmingham, are Grade I listed), the Elan Valley model village, e ...

. From 1911 to 1914 van 't Hoff studied at the

Architectural Association The Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, commonly referred to as the AA, is the oldest independent school of architecture in the UK and one of the most prestigious and competitive in the world. Its wide-ranging programme ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, where he became a friend of the

cubist Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

and

futurist Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abo ...

painter

David Bomberg David Garshen Bomberg (5 December 1890 – 19 August 1957) was a British painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys. Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henr ...

and through him became acquainted with the work of the avant-garde

Omega Workshops The Omega Workshops Ltd. was a design enterprise founded by members of the Bloomsbury Group and established in July 1913. Shone, Richard. (1999) ''The Art of Bloomsbury: Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant''. Princeton: Princeton University ...

Early career

Van 't Hoff's first built works were designed while he was still based in England. ''Løvdalla'' – a house built for his parents in Huis ter Heide near

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Net ...

and completed in 1911 – featured an informal cluster of gables reminiscent of some of Buckland's work in

Edgbaston Edgbaston () is an affluent suburban area of central Birmingham, England, historically in Warwickshire, and curved around the southwest of the city centre. In the 19th century, the area was under the control of the Gough-Calthorpe family a ...

, while '' De Zaaier'' was a model farmhouse built in Lunteren and completed in 1912, with a more distinctively Dutch design. Van 't Hoff's third house, built for the artist

Augustus John Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sarge ...

at 28 Mallord Street,

Chelsea, London Chelsea is an affluent area in west London, England, due south-west of Charing Cross by approximately 2.5 miles. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames and for postal purposes is part of the south-western postal area. Chelsea histori ...

, after the two met by chance in the pub, was both designed and built in 1913. In 1913 van 't Hoff was given a copy of a German translation of

Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...

Wasmuth Portfolio The ''Wasmuth Portfolio'' (1910) is a two-volume folio of 100 lithographs of the work of the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959). Titled ', it was published in Germany in 1911 by the Berlin publisher Ernst Wasmuth, with an accom ...

by his father. This made a profound impression and in June 1914 he travelled to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

to see Wright's work in person, visiting the

Unity Temple Unity Temple is a Unitarian Universalist church in Oak Park, Illinois, and the home of the Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation. It was designed by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and built between 1905 and 1908. Unity Te ...

Taliesin Taliesin ( , ; 6th century AD) was an early Brittonic poet of Sub-Roman Britain whose work has possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, the '' Book of Taliesin''. Taliesin was a renowned bard who is believed to have sung at the courts ...

Midway Gardens Midway Gardens (opened in 1914, demolished in 1929) was a 360,000 square feet indoor/outdoor entertainment facility in the Hyde Park neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. It was designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who also collaborate ...

, the

Larkin Administration Building The Larkin Building was an early 20th century building. It was designed in 1903 by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1904-1906 for the Larkin Soap Company of Buffalo, New York. The five story dark red brick building used pink tinted mortar and ...

and Wright's suburban houses in

Oak Park, Illinois Oak Park is a village in Cook County, Illinois, adjacent to Chicago. It is the 29th-most populous municipality in Illinois with a population of 54,583 as of the 2020 U.S. Census estimate. Oak Park was first settled in 1835 and later incorporated ...

. Van 't Hoff and Wright discussed collaborating on a project for an art gallery on Long Island, New York that van 't Hoff had become involved with through his relationship with

, but the project did not progress and van 't Hoff returned to Europe. Van 't Hoff's first work on returning from the United States was the ''Villa Verloop'' – a summer house in Huis ter Heide whose design bore the unmistakable influence of Wright's Prairie Houses. More remarkable however was his next work – the ''Villa Henny'' – which was a highly idealistic and experimental house in both design and execution. One of the earliest houses to be built entirely out of reinforced concrete, the ''Villa Henny'' made full use of the aesthetic freedom this presented with a flat roof, overhangs, receding walls and a highly geometrical outline that presented an unambiguously modern profile compared to the rustic naturalism of his earlier designs. The ''Villa Henny'' established van 't Hoff with the international avant-garde as a major figure in the emerging

modern movement Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

, gaining an influential and appreciative review from the architect

Huib Hoste Hubrecht (Huib) Hoste (6 February 1881 – 18 August 1957) was a Belgian architect, designer and urban planner. He is considered the pioneer of modern architecture in Belgium. Life Huib Hoste was born in Bruges on 6 February 1881. His birth w ...

in '' De Telegraaf'' and attracting the attention of the emerging ''

'' group.

''De Stijl''

Van 't Hoff probably met ''

'' founder

some time in mid-1917. Their radical views on art and society had a natural affinity and by the end of the year van 't Hoff was in regular correspondence with van Doesburg and other members of the movement including

Vilmos Huszár Vilmos Huszár (5 January 1884 – 8 September 1960) was a Hungarian painter and designer. He lived in The Netherlands, where he was one of the founding members of the art movement De Stijl. Huszár was born in Budapest, Hungary. He emigrate ...

and J. J. P. Oud. Over the next two years he was to write five articles for the ''De Stijl'' journal – three radical essays on the future of architecture and two critical pieces on buildings by

Jan Wils Jan Wils (22 February 1891 – 11 February 1972) was a Dutch architect. He was born in Alkmaar and died in Voorburg. Wils was one of the founding members of the De Stijl movement, which also included artists as Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg ...

and Antonio Sant' Elia. Van 't Hoff went on to support the journal financially after van Doesburg split from its original publisher over his insistence on installing a separate architecture editor. The range of van 't Hoff's design work also broadened around this time: he published designs for banister posts and chairs, and in 1918 designed a houseboat, which he christened ''De Stijl'' and in which he and his wife lived shortly after their marriage in July. This was conceived as an attempt to "further the new direction" and he was involved in every aspect of the interior and exterior design including the furniture and fittings. Van 't Hoff's preference for

Bart van der Leck Bart van der Leck (26 November 1876, Utrecht (city), Utrecht – 13 November 1958, Blaricum) was a Dutch painter, designer, and ceramicist. With Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian he founded the De Stijl art movement. Son of a house painter, h ...

over van Doesburg for the painting of the interior was the first sign of tension between the two, but a commission for van Doesburg from van 't Hoff for a colour scheme for the interior of a house he was designing for the pacifist and anarchist Bartholomeus (Bart) de Ligt in

Lage Vuursche Lage Vuursche () is a village in the municipality of Baarn in the Netherlands. It lies about west of Soest, surrounded by woods, in the province of Utrecht. In 2001 the village of Lage Vuursche had 139 inhabitants. The built-up area of the town ...

suggested that there was no serious split. During 1918 and 1919 van 't Hoff's ideological stance hardened in the light of the recent Russian Revolution. His design work at this time moved away from private houses and consisted largely of unrealised designs for prefabricated mass housing in association with the

architect P. J. C. Klaarhamer. In 1919 he joined the

and was active in arranging an exchange programme with artists in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

, making his political stance clear in a letter to fellow communist Chris Beekman: "I myself am convinced we will get a Soviet government, albeit that the transition will take a toll of some of our lives". Van 't Hoff's attempts to influence the ''De Stijl'' group in a more avowedly political direction met with frustration, however. The first ''De Stijl'' manifesto, published in November 1918, was interpreted by most of the group's members as a largely artistic statement, rather than the revolutionary document van 't Hoff sought. Van't Hoff criticised Van Doesburg in the summer of 1919 for exhibiting individually rather than maintaining an exclusive commitment to the ''De Stijl'' collective. In October 1919 Van Doesburg failed to circulate a petition demanding free postal interchange with the Soviet Union that had been signed by leading Dutch artists and designers and this prompted van 't Hoff to make a final and decisively split from both ''De Stijl'' and van Doesburg, remarking that "In Russia they execute such people".

Later life

Disillusioned with the revolutionary potential of the artistic avant-garde, van 't Hoff sold his houseboat and moved to Laren in North Holland in 1920, where he built two small houses for himself and his parents that were largely devoid of the abstract aesthetic ambitions of his earlier works – one even had a thatched roof. Although these featured some furniture and interior design work by Beekman and Rietveld, van 't Hoff had distanced himself from his earlier artistic lifestyle. The tenth anniversary issue of ''

'' featured an open letter signed "Robert Van. ('t Hoff)., ex-architect." In 1922 van 't Hoff moved to

with his family, spending most of the following five years promoting his communist and anarchist ideas in England and frequenting the

British Museum Reading Room The British Museum Reading Room, situated in the centre of the Great Court of the British Museum, used to be the main reading room of the British Library. In 1997, this function moved to the new British Library building at St Pancras, London, ...

. In 1926 he published an anonymously authored social and political manifesto called ''Abolition'', in which he called for a mass uprising. In 1928 he was invited by the American radical philanthropist Charles Garland to redesign the buildings on his utopian commune in

Coopersburg, Pennsylvania Coopersburg is a borough in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. The population of Coopersburg was 2,447 as of the 2020 census. It is a suburb of Allentown and is located miles southeast of Allentown, north of Philadelphia, and west of New York City ...

. The two disagreed over the proposed designs, however, and within nine months the van 't Hoff family had returned to Laren. Van 't Hoff retained some links with ''De Stijl'' during this period – continuing his correspondence with J. J. P. Oud, meeting Piet Mondrian in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

in 1931 and financing the final issue of the ''De Stijl'' journal in 1932. The ill health of their daughter led the van 't Hoffs to move to Davos in Switzerland in 1931, but in 1937 they returned to England to settle permanently in

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire ...

. The bombing of Coventry in 1940 profoundly touched van 't Hoff, who knew the city from his days studying in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...

and designed a large communal housing association building in the hope that the city could be rebuilt in accordance with his progressive ideals. In general, however, his last years in England were marked by increasing reclusiveness. The architect realised his last work in New Milton, (Hampshire, U.K.). He designed an interior for his study in his own house in 1960. The atmosphere in the study was very similar to the interior of the houseboat De Stijl (1917). When the house was demolished in 2006, this interior was donated to the Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo (The Netherlands) by Van 't Hoff's daughter Megan.Broekhuizen, D. (ed.), ''Robert van 't Hoff. Architect of a new Society'', Rotterdam: NAi publishers 2010. ()

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoff, Robert Van T Constructivist architects Modernist architects 1887 births 1979 deaths Dutch furniture designers De Stijl Architects from Rotterdam 20th-century Dutch architects 20th-century Dutch artists Alumni of the Birmingham School of Art