The overall picture of Stynen's work as an architect and city planner contains more than half a century of Belgian architectural history. Léon Stynen, successful at a young age, designed and executed a great number and a wide scope of different projects. Much of his oeuvre is located in the Province of Antwerp.
One of Stynen's last projects is the Royal Conservatory for Music, the Koninklijk Muziekconservatorium, in Antwerp, commissioned in 1958. Later BRT Radio 2 Antwerpen and the Internationaal Kunstcentrum deSingel were also located there. The deSingel officially opened its gates in 1980. Stynen developed this project in close cooperation with his assistant Paul de Meyer.
Léon Stynen (1899-1990) - son of a sculptor and decorative artist - studied architecture at the department of architecture at the academy of Antwerp. His contemporaries were, among others: V. Bourgeois, L.H. De Koninck, H. Hoste and E. Van Steenbergen and in the international context prominent figures, like T. van Doesburg, W. Gropius and - as a great source of inspiration and later a good friend - Le Corbusier.
Early in his carrier, Stynen was commissioned to build the Casinos in Knokke and in Chaudfontaine (1928). These projects demonstrated his preference for the new aesthetics of modernism, which at that time were not yet prevalent.
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apartment building Elsdonck |
The theoretical basis of Stynen's work is on the same line with the ideas of LeCorbusier. His apartment building in Wilrijk (1932) was a modest, but well conceived residential unit, long before LeCorbusier built Unité d'Habitation in Marseille. Stynen's proposal for urban development on the 'Linkeroever' in Antwerp (1932) - a competition that LeCorbusier also participated in - is totally in line with the ideas of C.I.A.M. (Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture).
from left to right: Jan Albert Goris (better known as Marnix Gysen), Henry Vandevelde, Léon Stynen and Paul Celis with a model of the Belgian pavilion for the World Fair in New York, 1939
Stynen was also very active in Belgian architectural education. Shortly after the war, architectural studies at the academy of Antwerp were reorganized. Architecture was separated from the fine arts department. As vice-president of the department, Stynen set up an independent institute in the same building: the N.H.I.B.S. Shortly afterwards, he became director of the Hoger Instituut voor Decoratieve Kunsten Ter Kameren in Brussel, an appointment supported by Henry van de Velde. Here Stynen was in charge of architectural instruction for fifteen years.
Stynen's quick adaptation of the technical and constructive developments in his times, also are manifest in his contribution to high-rise construction in Belgium in the 1960s. His architectural firm is responsible for a number of office and apartment buildings. The suspended-structure system was successfully adopted for the construction of the B.P. building (now AXA) on Jan van Rijswijcklaan in Antwerp (1961), whereby the façade no longer has supporting function. The apartment complex de Zonnewijzer in Antwerp (1954) demonstrates his humanistic and modernistic vision on housing.
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the apartment complex de Zonnewijzer |
the Casino in Oostende |
Stynen's oeuvre is wide-ranging and many-facetted. He designed one of the first cultural centres in Belgium, in Ukkel (1957), the Casino in Oostende (1949) and - in spite of his anti-clerical leanings - the Church of Harelbeke (1952). He built cinemas and schools, shops and social housing. He shaped the interiors of ships. He designed bridges and furniture and made a number of urban planning studies. Many of his plans were never executed, such as a plan for the Heysel Towers in Brussels (1958) and a plan for a museum for Contemporary Art in the Middelheim Park, after a design by LeCorbusier.
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