Mart van Schijndel

Mart van Schijndel – architect and product designer

Mart van Schijndel (1943) was one of the few Dutch architects to embrace postmodernism at an early stage and without reservation. A visible example of this can be found in the façade of the LOKV building in Utrecht (National Support Institute for Arts Education, Ganzenmarkt 6), where he applied broken columns and rustic motifs. For Van Schijndel, postmodernism offered a broad repertoire of forms, typologies, and materials, allowing him to consciously distance himself from the limitations of modernism.

At the same time, he remained deeply interested in technical innovation and industrial production. In his work, he combined this rational approach with the expressiveness of postmodernism. Light and space were employed as active design elements. His own residence at Pieterskerkhof in Utrecht, awarded the Rietveld Prize in 1995, is considered a key work within his oeuvre. In 1999, the building was added to Utrecht’s municipal heritage list as the youngest listed monument in the city.

Van Schijndel graduated in 1967 from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, where he was trained as a furniture designer as well as a building and interior architect. A year later, he established his own architectural practice in Utrecht. He worked primarily for private clients and cultural institutions, and for many projects he also designed the interior, furniture, and lighting.

Alongside his design practice, Van Schijndel was active in education. He taught at various academies in the Netherlands and was affiliated for fifteen years with the Fachhochschule in Düsseldorf, where he played a significant role in the training of young architects.

Van Schijndel also made his mark as a product designer. Designs such as the Delta Vase and the aluminium stacking chair Fulfil, developed in collaboration with Lensvelt, brought him international recognition. The Delta Vase is included in the permanent collections of institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, and the Kröller-Müller Museum.

Mart van Schijndel passed away at the age of 56 after a short illness.