competition to draw up city plans for the southwesterly expansion of the city of The Hague. The plan deviated from most entries in the sense that it was deliberately anti-monumental and predicated on a smooth flow of traffic. Its main striking feature was that the roads first ran parallel to the coast before curving west and terminating in parkland and the beach. These two concerns, i.e. that new modes of transport should govern city morphology, and that "all forms of embellishment or theatrical elements ought to be avoided" became mainstays in Mart Stam's oeuvre. The scheme was not awarded a prize, but Stam later self-published the design. Pre-War Years in Germany By the end of 1922, Stam had moved to Berlin, where he began to develop his style as a New Objectivity architect. His first major work in Berlin was under prominent architect Max Taut. Stam was assigned to design a variety of buildings across Germany, notably assisting Taut in the design of the German Trade Union Federation Building, Düsseldorf. During this time, he met the Russian avant-garde architect El Lissitzky. In 1924 Lissitzky had designed the striking Wolkenbügel, or cloud iron / sky hook, a t-shaped skyscraper supported on 3 metal framed columns, which appeared on the front cover of Adolf Behne's book, Der Moderne Zweckbau, and was published in further articles written by Lissitzky for the Moscow-based constructivist architectural review ASNOVA News (journal of ASNOVA, the Association of New Architects), and in the German art journal Das Kunstblatt. With Alfred Roth Stam reworked the Wolkenbügel design in concrete as a single raised bar on splayed truss legs. Although never built, both proposals were intended as socialist answers to the skyscrapers of America's capitalist cities. Deliberately horizontal in orientation, the buildings were set on the main intersections of Moscow's ring road and only rose to a relatively modest height as to form symbolic city gates. In 1924 Mart Stam co-founded the magazine ABC Beiträge zum Bauen in Basle (Contributions on Building) with El Lissitzky while Lissitzky was convalescing from tuberculosis. One of the features of this avant-garde magazine was its polemical use of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) alternatives to contemporary architecture, and it would even rework proposals by other modernists to great effect. In spite of its limited print run it therefore became known as the magazine that brought modernism to Switzerland. Other editors, beside Stam and Lissitzky, were