(b Driebergen, 16 March 1918). Dutch architect, writer and teacher. He attended Dutch and English schools and received his architectural training at the Eidgen?ssische Technische Hochschule in Zurich (1939-43). He worked as an architect in the Publieke Werken, Amsterdam (1946-51), and then established his own office in 1951. Van Eyck was a talented Functionalist of the younger generation and the Dutch delegate to CIAM from 1947, but one of his early concerns was for a freer imagination in architecture in place of the rigid Functionalism of CIAM. Like the Cobra group, he found a source of inspiration in the imagination of children, expressed in the 730 playgrounds he designed in Amsterdam between 1947 and 1974, and in traditional cultures, particularly in Africa. These experiences, and contact with a new generation of modern architects in the Netherlands including Jacob Bakema and Herman Hertzberger, led him to play an important role in TEAM TEN, the group that emerged from CIAM in 1956 to promote the importance of individual architectural and social identity, scale and meaning in place of the mechanical and generalized ideology of CIAM's Charte d'Ath?nes (1933).
See the Abbreviations for further details.
