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.

Hans Ibelings' profile page

Hans Ibelings is an architectural historian and critic who teaches at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. He holds a PhD in architecture from the University of Coimbra. Since 2012, he has been the editor and publisher of The Architecture Observer; he has also been editor and publisher of A10 new European architecture, a magazine he founded in 2004 with designer Arjan Groot. Ibelings is the author of books including European Architecture Since 1890 (2011) and Supermodernism: Architecture in the Age of Globalization (1998 and 2003).