Lotte Stam Beese

This may not be the most beautiful part of the city, but it is where the story of Lotte Stam-Beese begins. She was responsible for rebuilding much of Rotterdam and shaping the city as it is today.

Lotte Stam-Beese was born in 1903 in Germany and started her career at the Bauhaus in Dessau. She was the first woman admitted to the architecture program and had to prove herself in a male-dominated world. Her experiences there strongly influenced her later work in Rotterdam.

She worked in Berlin, Brno, and the Soviet Union, where she met her husband Mart Stam. After the war, she became an urban planner for the city of Rotterdam.

Rotterdam lay in ruins, and Stam-Beese designed new neighborhoods such as Kleinpolder, Pendrecht, and Alexanderpolder/Ommoord. Her vision was clear: orderly residential areas with light, air, and green space. Pendrecht became her most famous project, featuring car-free paths and ‘bent flats’ to create a spacious feeling.

She taught at the Academy of Architecture and was honored with the Wolfert van Borselen medal and a street named after her.

She died in 1988, but her influence remains visible in Rotterdam. Without her, the city would look very different.