C. van Eesteren (1897-1988) Cornelis van Eesteren is a son of Balten van Eesteren, firm owner of the contracting company Boele & Van Eesteren. He learns about building from practice. For theoretical foundation, he attends the Academy of Visual Arts and Technical Sciences in Rotterdam. From 1919 he attends the Voortgezet en Hoger Bouwkunst Onderricht in Amsterdam and obtains the Prix de Rome with a design for a Royal Institute of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts (1921). From the associated cash prize, he takes a trip to Germany and Scandinavia in 1922, where he immerses himself in the architecture and urban planning of cities such as Berlin, Dresden, Prague and Vienna. He also becomes acquainted with the work of architects such as E. Mendelsohn, Eliel Saarinen and Adolf Loos and with artists from the Bauhaus school in Weimar. He meets Theo van Doesburg, with whom he designs three houses and exhibits them, through drawings and models, at the exhibition "Les Architectes du Groupe "De Stijl"" (Paris 1923). From 1923 to 1924, he continues his education in urban planning at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Urbaines at the Sorbonne, the University of Paris. Back in the Netherlands, Van Eesteren works as chef de bureau for architect Jan Wils, but continues to have a strong interest in urban planning. In 1925, he provides competition designs for the Rokin in Amsterdam and for the modernization of Berlin's Boulevard Unter den Linden. They are enthusiastically received in Germany: Van Eesteren is appointed guest lecturer at the Staatliche Bauhochschule in Weimar for the period 1927-1930. Van Eesteren enters service in 1929 as head of the recently established Urban Development Department of the Public Works Department in Amsterdam. Together with his colleague Th.K. van Lohuizen (1890-1956), he works there on the General Expansion Plan (AUP) of Amsterdam (1934), which forms the basis for the urban expansions realized after World War II, such as the Western Garden Cities and the Buitenveldert district. Van Eesteren is the spiritual father of "the functional city" with strict separation of functions such as housing, traffic, work, recreation and nature, without otherwise losing sight of the harmonious coherence of the whole. After the Second World War, Van Eesteren's career is dominated by the layout of the IJsselmeer polders. An important part of this is the plan for Lelystad, which is to become the new center of the polders (1959-1964). Internationally, Van Eesteren is considered a prominent urban planner. He was chairman of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) from 1930-1947 and, by virtue of that position, initiated the congress "The Functional City" in 1933. In 1948 he was appointed extraordinary professor of urban planning at the Technische Hogeschool (TH) Delft. Together with architect J.H. van den Broek, he breaks through the dominance of the Delft school at TH Delft and brings modernism into the school. During the same period, he holds a visiting professorship at the University of Santiago (Chile). Outside activities: TH Delft, architecture department/ordinary professor of urban planning/1948-?