Mart Stam took drawing lessons in Amsterdam from 1917 to 1919 and studied architecture at the University of Amsterdam until 1922, when he joined the office of the architect Jan Granpré Molière in Rotterdam. In 1922 Stam worked for Max Taut and Hans Poelzig in Berlin, and from 1923 to 1925 for architect Karl Moser in Zürich and Johannes Itten in Thun.
In 1924 Stam was one of the founders of the Swiss avant-garde magazine ABC-Beitrage zum Bauen which covered the architecture of functionalistic movement. Stam returned to the Netherlands in 1926 where he worked for Brinkamn & Van d Vlugt and the Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam. During the same year Stam invented and developed the design for a chair, made of steel pipes without any back legs, later namned as cantilever chairs. Even tough Stam took out a patent for his design, called the W1, it was later used by both Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer. The design also spurred an infringement process against Thonet.
From 1928 to 1930 Stam was a guest lecturer in urban planning at the Bauhaus school in Dessau.
Together with 15 other architects, Stam got commissioned to create the communal area Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart. The project was a part of the iconic fair Die Wohnung which is considered one of the real starting points for functionalism as an ideal. With this project in mind, Stam developed the W1, together with Anton Lorenz, called the ST 12. During the exhibition Stam also met Gerrit Rietveld and Henrik Petrus Berlage with whom he later founded the modernistic think tank Congrés Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM).
In 1930 Stam traveled to the Soviet Union where he participated in grand scale housing and city schemes. In 1934 he was back in the Netherlands after several unsuccessful projects. Stam worked as an architect in Amsterdam, while also being the director of the Institute of Applied Art. In 1948 he moved to the Soviet Occupation Zone, later the GDR, where he became the director of the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst in Berlin.
In 1966 Stam retired to Switzerland where he passed away in 1986 at the age of 87.
