Lotte Stam-Beese

Charlotte Ida Anna "Lotte" Stam-Beese (née Beese, January 28, 1903 - November 18, 1988) was a German architect and urban planner who helped with the reconstruction of Rotterdam after World War II.

Life and work

Beese was born in Reisicht, Silesia, Germany (now Rokitki, Tczew County, Poland).^[1] As a young adult she first found work as a weaver in Dresden.^[1][2] She attended the Bauhaus school, starting in 1926, where she studied with Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, Joost Schmidt, and Gunta Stölzl. Though she enrolled to study weaving, she took classes in photography as well as architecture, changing her career path.^[1][2]

She was one of the first women to join the Bauhaus Department of Architecture in 1927 and the first to study with Hannes Meyer and Hans Wittwer. She continued to work with Meyer after leaving Bauhaus, working at his office in Berlin and later following him to Moscow to work for Mart Stam, whom she would later marry. After moving back to Stam's home in Amsterdam she ran her own architectural firm in the mid-late 1930s. She is best known for her work redeveloping the city of Rotterdam, where among other projects she helped to build the Pendrecht, Alexanderpolder, and Ommoord districts.^[2][3][4] Later in life she took a job teaching architecture at the Academy of Architecture and Urban Planning in Amsterdam.

Before beginning her career as an architect, Beese was a successful photographer. Though she only worked with the medium professionally for a short period from 1926-1928, her work had a disproportionate impact and is now held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York,^[5] Arthur M. Sackler Museum, and the J. Paul Getty Museum.^[6]

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