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MANILA, Philippines - Who is this Dutch furniture designer architect, one of the principal members behind the artistic and movement De Stijl and known for his Red and Blue Chair?
He was born in Utrecht in 1888 as the son of a joiner. He left school at 11 to be apprenticed to his father and enrolled at night school before working as a draftsman for C. J. Begeer, a jeweller in Utrecht, from 1906 to 1911. By the time he opened his own furniture workshop in 1917, he had taught himself drawing, painting and model-making. He afterwards set up business as a cabinet-maker.
He designed his famous Red and Blue Chair in 1917. Hoping that much of his furniture would eventually be mass-produced rather than handcrafted, he aimed for simplicity in construction. In 1918, he started his own furniture factory, and changed the chair’s colors after becoming influenced by the De Stijl movement, of which he became a member in 1919, the same year in which he became an architect. The contacts that he made at De Stijl gave him the opportunity to exhibit abroad as well. In 1923, Walter Gropius invited him to exhibit at the Bauhaus. He designed his first building in 1924, in close collaboration with the owner Truus Schröder-Schräder. Built in Utrecht on the Prins Hendriklaan 50, the house has a conventional ground floor, but is radical on the top floor, lacking fixed walls but instead relying on sliding walls to create and change living spaces. The design seems like a three-dimensional realization of a Mondrian painting. The house has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000. His involvement in the Schröder House exerted a strong influence on Truus’ daughter, Han Schröder, who became one of the first female architects in the Netherlands.
He broke with De Stijl in 1928 and became associated with a more functionalist-style of architecture, known as either Nieuwe Zakelijkheid or Nieuwe Bouwen. 
The same year he joined the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne. From the late 1920s he was concerned with social housing, inexpensive production methods, new materials, prefabrication and standardization. In 1927 he was already experimenting with prefabricated concrete slabs, a very unusual material at that time. In the 1920s and 1930s, however, all his commissions came from private individuals, and it was not until the ‘50s that he was able to put his progressive ideas about social housing into practice, in projects in Utrecht and Reeuwijk.
He designed the Zig-Zag Chair in 1934 and started the design of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which was finished after his death.
In 1951 he designed a retrospective exhibition about De Stijl, which was held in Amsterdam, Venice and New York. Interest in his work revived as a result. In subsequent years he was given many prestigious commissions, including the Dutch pavilion for the Venice Biennale 1953, the art academies in Amsterdam and Arnhem, and the press room for the UNESCO building in Paris. Designed for the display of small sculptures at the Third International Sculpture Exhibition in Arnhem’s Sonsbeek Park in 1955, his Sonsbeek Pavilion was rebuilt with new materials at the Kröller-Müller Museum in 2010. In order to handle all these projects, in 1961 he set up a partnership with the architects Johan Van Dillen and J. Van Tricht built hundreds of homes, many of them in the city of Utrecht.
Last week’s question: Who is the Melbourne based chef known for his indulgent French fare in his Vue de Monde restaurant?
Answer: Shannon Bennett
Winner of June 9: Cynthia Lesley Miranda
Last week’s winner: Jose Conrado dela Peña Jr.
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