Cornelis van eesteren biography of martin

An exhibit about the famous urban designer Cornelis van Eesteren (1897-1988), one of the authors of the new areas of Amsterdam built after the World War II on the outskirts of the city.

Son of a building contractor and a city official in Ablasserdam in South Holland, Van Eesteren became himself an architect, won several prizes for his designs, was a colleague of world pioneers of modern urbanism as Le Corbusier and van Doesburg and a member of the Dutch De Stijl group.

Van Eesteren was one of the architects instrumental in the creation of The Athens Charter - the document written by the Swiss architecture genius Le Corbusier in 1933 and proclaimed again in 1944, conveying ideas of modern urban planning.

Ideas of modern city

While European cities grew fast just before and after the World War II, it became clear that without constructing whole new city areas it would be impossible to achieve an improvement of living conditions of working class people.

An idea of the garden cit