Böcker av Hans Ibelings

This book examines the exceptional work of Van Ginkel Associates, the office of husband and wife Sandy Van Ginkel and Blanche Lemco, whose significance in the development of Canadian architecture and planning can hardly be overestimated. With a multitude of international relations ¿ including Team Ten, Hendrik Wijdeveld, Aldo van Eyck, Sven Markelius, Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn ¿ they connected the radical new ideas of avant-garde architects in Europe with the Canadian context, where modern architecture and planning were still in their infancy.Based on extensive research in the VGA Archive and interviews with Blanche Lemco and others, this book offers a concise introduction to the fascinating life and ideas of the Van Ginkels and their office, emphasizing not built outcomes but their highly conceptual approach and their lateral thinking. This is also a story of traveling ideas: how the Van Ginkels absorbed, developed, and mediated novel concepts and approaches and introduced them to a rapidly evolving, and urbanizing, Canada.

This monograph gives a comprehensive overview of the designs and built work of Arne van Herk and Sabien de Kleijn, from 1973 until the present day. Besides architecture, urban design, interiors and furniture, the book dwells at length on the informal and conceptual projects--films, clothing, everyday objects--developed by van Herk & de Kleijn throughout their career. Their joint oeuvre is explored in a continuous narrative that makes no distinction between the ingenious rooflights of their own houseboat and a major housing project like Haarlemmerhouttuinen in Amsterdam, and focuses just as easily on their ultra-light half-meter-high platform shoes as on one of their interiors. If the significance of their work lies in their liberal concern for everyday things, this volume emphasizes their approach as one that eschews image in favor of imagination, of giving shape to the things with which we surround ourselves. The visual narrative, with explanatory texts by Arne van Herk and Sabien de Kleijn, is complemented by an in-depth essay by Hans Ibelings and a foreword by the landscape architect Adriaan Geuze.