Mart Stam (1899–1986) was a Dutch architect, urban planner, and furniture designer. Stam was extraordinarily well-connected, and his career intersects with important moments in the history of 20th-century European architecture, including chair design at the Bauhaus, the Weissenhoff Seidlung in Stuttgart and postwar reconstruction in Germany. Stam is most famous for devising a tubular steel cantilever chair in the early 1920s and spawning an entire genre of chair design, which was immediately taken up and expanded by Marcel Breuer and Mies van der Rohe.

Read more in our Journal about the invention of the cantilever chair and its development throughout the 20th century via some of the most influential designers of the era.