Piet Kramer

Pieter Lodewijk Kramer was a Dutch architect, one of the most important architects of the Amsterdam School. From 1903 to 1911 Piet Kramer worked in the architectural practice of Eduard Cuypers, where he came into contact with the architects Johan van der Mey and Michel de Klerk. In 1911 van der Mey received the commission to design the Scheepvaarthuis, a cooperative building for six Dutch shipping companies. Van der Mey sought the assistance of his former colleague-architects Piet Kramer and Michel de Klerk to realize this building. The Scheepvaarthuis is considered the starting point of the Amsterdam School movement. Later Piet Kramer collaborated with Michel de Klerk on the well-known De Dageraad housing project in Amsterdam South. Outside Amsterdam he built one of his masterpieces, the De Bijenkorf Store in The Hague. After the death of Michel de Klerk in 1923, Piet Kramer was the leading architect of the Amsterdam School until the end of this movement in the beginning of the 1930s. In the years of economic crisis of the 1930s the expensive architecture of the Amsterdam School was passé.