Broek, Johannes Hendrik van den

Born Oct. 4, 1898, in Rotterdam. Dutch architect.

Broek studied at the Higher Technical School in Delft (1919-24), where he became a professor in 1948. Since 1927 he has worked in Rotterdam, from 1948 in collaboration with J. B. Bakema. In 1948 he became a member of the executive committee of the International Union of Architects. Broek and Bakema designed the Hispano-Suisse factory in Breda (1950-52), the Radio Center in Hilversum (1956-61), the Netherlands Pavilion at the Brussels World Exhibition (1958), and a number of apartment houses, office buildings, schools, laboratories, and churches. They planned the construction of new districts in Rotterdam (1949-56) and Amsterdam (1966). Their most important work is the commercial center in Rotterdam, the Lijnbaan (1949-53), consisting of two-story shop buildings along planted pedestrian walks decorated with sculptures. Since the middle of the 1950’s Broek and Bakema have given their buildings crudely massive forms in the spirit of brutalism (the Town Hall of Marl in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1958-65), basing their work on the principles of functionalism.