Bob van Reeth and the Demands of Architecture

Precisely because he has always resisted originality, Bob van Reeth is one of today' s most original architects. He does not fit into any school or movement, not even that of the traditionalists who reject all schools and trends. He was like that when still a student in the mid-sixties; he did not rebel against existing systems but went in search of the place where architecture could still be found in its freedom and necessity. He knew the fundamental strength of architecture from the brickyards of his native region, the banks of the Scheldt between Temse and Niel, and discovered its imaginative power in the sometimes bizarre outbuildings that proliferated behind conventional blocks of houses. His approach is primarily concerned not with the originality of an oeuvre but with the question that each new assignment asks of architecture.