History of painting group's theories. Next to van Doesburg, the group's principal members were the painters Piet Mondrian, Vilmos Huszár, and Bart van der Leck, and the architects Gerrit Rietveld, Robert van 't Hoff, and J. J. P. Oud. The artistic philosophy that formed a basis for the group's work is known as "neoplasticism" — the new plastic art (or "Nieuwe Beelding" in Dutch). Proponents of De Stijl sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. They advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour; they simplified visual compositions to the vertical
Joan van der Mey capacity he developed the facade for the 1912 Palm House at the Hortus Botanicus among other buildings. That same year brought the commission for the Scheepvaarthuis, a large cooperative building for six Dutch shipping companies. Van der Mey sought the assistance of his former colleague-architects Michel de Klerk and Piet Kramer, and the architect "Adolf Daniël Nicolaas van Gendt" was responsible for engineering the concrete structure. Van der Mey's job was to coordinate the extensive symbolic art and sculptural program, inside and outside. Much of the sculpture is the work of Hildo Krop and H. A. van den Eijnde, but