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Henri van de Velde

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(born April 3, 1863, Antwerp, Belg.—died Oct. 25, 1957, Zürich, Switz.) Belgian architect, designer, and teacher. Sharing the philosophy of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement, van de Velde believed in creating beautiful everyday objects. Increasingly occupied by a philosophy of total design, in 1895 he designed Bloemenwerf, a house for his wife and himself outside of Brussels for which he also designed all the interiors and furnishings. In 1896 he designed furniture and interiors for the Paris art galleries of Samuel Bing; because of the curving, delicate nature of these designs, van de Velde is credited with bringing the Art Nouveau style to Paris. (Van de Velde himself is generally associated with the Jugendstil movement, which was the German branch of Art Nouveau design.) In Weimer in 1902 he reorganized the arts and crafts school and the academy of fine art and thus laid the foundations for the amalgamation of the two bodies into the Bauhaus in 1919. He designed his best-known structure, the curving, sinuous Werkbund Theatre in Cologne, in 1914. His later work includes the Belgian pavilions at the international exhibitions in Paris (1937) and New York (1939). He also created graphic design work, generally in the curvilinear Art Nouveau style, and he spread his ideas through lecturing and teaching.

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