Charles Prosper Wolff Schoemaker

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Charles Prosper Wolff Schoemaker (25 July 1882 – 22 May 1949) was a Dutch architect who designed famous Art Deco buildings in Bandung, Indonesia, including Villa Isola and Hotel Preanger. He is often called the Frank Lloyd Wright of Indonesia, with Wright’s work influencing his modernist style. He was also a painter and sculptor.

He was born in Banyubiru, Semarang, Java, and went to the Royal Military Academy in Breda. In 1905 he returned to the Dutch East Indies to work as a military engineer for the Royal Dutch East Indies Army. He left in 1911 to work as an engineer for the Department of Civil Public Works in Batavia (Jakarta) and became Director of Public Works in 1914. From 1917 to 1918 he worked for Fa. Schlieper & Co and took a study trip to the United States, where he learned about Frank Lloyd Wright’s work.

In 1918 he and his brother Richard founded the architectural firm C.P. Schoemaker and Associates in Bandung. The firm blended traditional Indonesian ideas with modern European styles and followed a functionalist approach.

Notable buildings include the Sociëteit Concordia on Braga Street (built in 1921; the site of the 1955 Asian–African Conference, today Gedung Merdeka), the Hotel Preanger (1929), the Pasteur Institute, St. Peter Cathedral, and Villa Isola (1932). His own house, built in Bandung in 1930, later faced demolition in 1995 but was saved and repurposed as a bank in 1996 with help from local architects and students. The conservation won a UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Award for Culture Heritage Conservation in 2000.

In 1922 he became a professor at Technische Hoogeschool Bandoeng (now ITB). While teaching, he mentored Sukarno, who would become Indonesia’s first president. With Sukarno’s help, he renovated the Hotel Preanger in 1929, and Sukarno also designed several houses in Bandung.

Villa Isola, built 1932–1933 for Dominique William Berretty, is one of his most important works. Its design reflects Indonesian ideas, with a north–south orientation toward Mount Tangkuban Perahu to the north and the city of Bandung to the south, and features circular shapes, a spiral staircase, and an arch-shaped window.

Wolff Schoemaker traveled to the Netherlands in 1939 and taught at the Delft University of Technology until his retirement in 1941. He died in Bandung in 1949 and was buried in the Dutch War Cemetery Pandu. He is remembered as one of the best Indonesian architects of his time, known for blending European design with Indonesian traditions to create a modern style suited to tropical conditions.