Biography
Lotte Beese was born in 1903 on the 28th of January in Reisicht, Germany (now known as the village Rokitki in Poland). After her final school exams in 1921, she took courses in shorthand and typing so that she would be able to travel all over Germany. Two years later, she would find herself working in the 'Deutsche Werkstätten' (German Workshops) in the district of Hellerau in Dresden.
Although on paper she was an office worker, they soon gave her her own space in the textile workshop itself, where she learned the basic concepts of textiles.
In Hellerau, she met students of the “Staatliches Bauhaus” (State School of Construction) and their descriptions of their experiences there were enough to convince her that Bauhaus was exactly what she was looking for. After a prolonged illness, she finally applied to Bauhaus’ Dessau campus and gained entry for the winter semester of 1926.
In her first semester, Lotte Beese attended the foundation course taught by Josef Albers. Additionally, she took complementary subjects of “analytical drawing” with Wassily Kandinsky, “Lettering” with Joost Schmidt, “Descriptive Geometry” and “Physics/Chemistry”. Upon completing the foundation course, Beese moved to the textile workshop of Gunta Stölzl.
By the end of the semester of 1927-28, the young student had met all the necessary requirements to study in the Department of Architecture, which had just opened in 1927. In fact, she became the first woman in the department to study under the tutelage of both Hannes Meyer and Hans Wittwer.
In addition to architecture, Beese also learnt the basic concepts of statics, construction materials, construction, heating technology and urban planning.
Just one year later, Lotte Beese left Bauhaus voluntarily without achieving a pass, her time at Bauhaus complicated by a relationship with the then-married director of the school, Hannes Meyer.
She was an enthusiastic photographer and left behind a large quantity of high-quality artistic images which document life at the Bauhaus.
In 1929 she moved to Berlin, where she worked initially in the studio of the architect Hugo Häring. Finally, she ended up working in the private office of Meyer, who was also in Berlin, and worked on the construction planning of the National College of the General German Trade Union Confederation, in Bernau.
Once the project was completed, Beese had no reason to stay any longer in Berlin. Through his connections with the avant-garde of the architectural world, Hannes Meyer secured a job for Beese in Brno, Czechoslovakia, with the architect Bohuslav Fuchs.
In 1930 Beese followed Hannes Meyer to Moscow, where she carried out planning works for the city of Orsk, Siberia, under the guidance of Dutch architect Mart Stam. In 1931, Lotte Beese and Hannes Meyer would become parents to a baby boy named Peter, however, Meyer continued to live with his wife Lena Bergner.
In 1935, Lotte Beese moved to Amsterdam with Mart Stam, who she later married. There she ran her own architectural studio in Amsterdam until 1938.
During the war, she wrote her dissertation at Amsterdam University’s Faculty of Architecture and graduated there in 1944. From 1946 to 1968, Beese worked as an architect involved in the urban development of the city of Rotterdam.
She created the first “car-free” street in the Netherlands in 1947 and from 1949 she participated in the construction of the district of Pendrecht, followed by Alexanderpolder and Onmoord.
She also taught at the Academy of Architecture and Urban Planning at Amsterdam University. Stam-Beese was able to express her socialist ideas through her favourite field of work: social housing in the context of urban environments.
