(Essay by C. Leenen; abridged version) Youth and education Josephus Henricus Antonius Bedaux, Jos. Bedaux, was born on April 18, 1910. Jo is his call sign, Jos. is the name by which he signs his designs. Father Sjel has a contracting business, is chairman of the contractors' association and a city council member in Tilburg. He is a man of distinction in the city. The family consists of five boys and two girls. After elementary school, Jos. completes the three-year Commerce course: commercial correspondence, commercial arithmetic and bookkeeping. He obtains the final diploma on July 12, 1927, and the Mercury diploma on July 30, 1927, the only diplomas of his life. After completing his Commerce degree, Jos. Bedaux started working at age 17 as a bookkeeper in his father's contracting company. Because his father believes that even a bookkeeper should know all facets of the construction business, Jos. works as a carpenter, mason, demolisher, truck driver and assistant foreman. Ever since he was 12 years old, Jos Bedaux has been taking part on Sunday mornings from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the architectural drawing classes that Michiel Bedaux has instituted for further training of his staff. Jos. goes on to produce for him the necessary drawings for the building applications for the smaller works that the contracting company is assigned. To improve his skills, around 1930 Jos. takes a Statics course at the Katholieke Leergangen (Catholic Training Colleges) for the calculations involved in building plans. At this college he comes into contact with student life and gets to know people who will become important to him. In the first years he works partly in his father's contracting company and partly as an architect for commissions the contracting company receives. He starts at his father's house blocks, which he draws for the contracting company. When Jo is 22 years old, his father "lends" him as a draftsman on request to the Tilburg architect Jan Visser, an architect for whom Michiel Bedaux works. In the same year 1932, Jo carries out his first assignment: his father has him draw the extension and renovation of the Ave Maria mission house in Tilburg. Jos. Bedaux had meanwhile become acquainted with the work of the architect A.J. Kropholler (1881-1973) and the extension of the mission house, with its heavy brick architecture and traditional materials and construction methods applied in a traditional way, shows the necessary similarities with his style. Independent architect in the 1930s Despite the unfavorable outlook in these years, Jos. Bedaux follows his heart and starts his own business. In these difficult times at the beginning of his career as an architect, he is helped by his family. Not only his father's contacts, but also the circles he becomes part of are very important to him as a beginning architect. Many people he gets to know in the 1930s will become later clients. Characteristic work Bedaux was self-taught and learned his trade at his father's contracting firm. He started very uninhibitedly as an architect, developed his own idiom and maintained and honed it throughout his career. A long search led him to maintain the same serene atmosphere with less and less ornamentation. From the buildings emanates a tremendous tranquility through harmony and aesthetics. It is an almost self-evident beauty that is immediately experienced. The application of clear volumes in harmonious compositions and facades in which he assembles details from his "construction box," as it were, are the hallmark of quality. He brings it into a system in terms of proportions and sizes and makes it into a whole. It looks simple, but the hand of the master is always recognizable. Jos. Bedaux built many country houses. In these he was given artistic freedom, in which - regardless of the architectural style - the representation of the clients came first. Each residence (but every building anyway) became a new design task, where Bedaux varied in everything. The facade layout, the entrance area, the gutter solution, the wrought iron, the dormers, the lamp; everything is different with each structure. Nothing was created from a standard design or standard detailing. Nevertheless, there are some constants in the formal language of Jos. Bedaux. He composes the houses: attached to a main volume are lower additions such as (auxiliary) kitchens, sheds and garages. In this way he suggests an organically grown whole, a building history that never existed. He connects detached elements to the house with a wall. Bedaux also applies these man-sized walls to (partially) shelter the garden or visually enlarge the house. On the termination of the walls are invariably concrete ornamental balls. The masonry is always-there is no exception-in Flemish bond with a hand-formed brick. Often the facades are painted white, with a distinctive plinth in black or gray. The gabled roofs are covered with tiles or slates, and only occasionally does he use thatch. Bedaux often applies dormers, even where it is not functionally necessary: he uses the dormer to further indicate the atmosphere of the house. Most of Bedaux's residential houses -even in traditional work- are equipped with steel windows. Bedaux applied the latest gadgets in the field of steel windows, and he did not shy away from large glass walls that can be slid open or turned. The entrance receives much attention; at first it is richly decorated and equipped with sidewalk posts with chains or other demarcations, later careful paving and the lantern remain. The lantern, like the dormer, serves to further define the atmosphere. Bedaux designed at least 50 of them. The use of (ornamental) ironwork is also a recognizable detail in Bedaux's work: French balconies with railings in all styles, fitted with balls or abstract birds, lettering, ornaments and hardware. He also designs the terrace and paving around the house. In the house, he is also concerned with the flooring: in the early years he uses Brabant peasant tiles, later the fancier natural stone Solnhofer tiles. Internally, too, different detailing further supports the atmosphere. Bedaux keeps a tight rein on this and draws the entire interior: staircases, banisters, interior doors and frames, cabinets, kitchens and also furniture. In the early period, the spacious rooms have high ceilings; in his later, modern work, on the contrary, the ceilings become low at 2.26 m., because Bedaux then bases himself on Le Corbusier's Modulor). High or low ceilings, it always remains in proportion, because Bedaux had a perfect sense of size. The ongoing development in his oeuvre is from exuberant traditionalism being downsized to an almost timeless, subdued modernism, with a continuous penchant for the monumental. It does not mean that ornaments disappear altogether, for Jos. Bedaux was not a purist. The ornaments soften and become abstract, ornamental elements. Bedaux was never a supporter of the absolute. He worked with a system of dimensional relationships, but this was not an absolute system. Moreover, he did not believe in industrialization and the standardization that came with it. Bedaux's later work is not a hard break with his earlier architectural views. It is a special quality of Bedaux that even within these designs he is an interpreter who nowhere betrays his origins (Burgundian, ritualistic and artisanal). In the mediation of these qualities with the values of modernism, he makes his influence felt. What could be seen as a handicap - no education and therefore no professional network - did not work to Jos. Bedaux, however, did not work to his disadvantage. Throughout his career, he (consciously or unconsciously) sought out the circles that could be important to him. His social skills and jovial personality will certainly have helped him build up a large circle of loyal clients and realize a large body of work.