Piet Zanstra (1905), Jan Giesen (1903-1980) and Karel Sijmons (1908-1989) founded an architectural firm in 1932. The three are members of Group '32, a group of young architects who advocate a new architecture in which aesthetics should play a role again, in addition to functionality and technology. They are fed up with the austerity and dullness of the Nieuwe Bouwen; the French architect Le Corbusier is their great idol. They move into a room in Giesen's mother's house. Giesen, the businessman of the pair, has a desk with a telephone; the two others a drawing board. They do not wait for commissions but take their own initiatives. They design a building with studio apartments for artists, a type of building unknown in the Netherlands that Zanstra had encountered in Paris. By establishing contacts with the municipality, artists and a contractor, Giesen manages to generate enthusiasm for the plan, which would relieve artists of their "leaky attics. Once sufficient tenants and a building site in Amsterdam-Zuid are found, construction can begin March 17, 1934. Completion follows five months later. The building has a modern steel frame clad in brick. The north side has four floors of high studios, lit by large strip windows. On the first floor are larger workshops for sculptors. The south side has six floors of living quarters, provided with elongated strips of windows. Of course, steel window frames were used. Well-known artists, including Charlotte van Pallandt, Fred Carasso and Jan Wolkers, lived there for some time. In the late 1980s, the complex was placed on the Monument List and restored to its former glory by Bertus Mulder, who also restored Rietveld's work. In 1954 the collaboration ends. Zanstra becomes the namesake of one of the largest architectural firms in the Netherlands, continuing as ZZOP and ZZ and P. His large-scale business architecture, which receives the Berlage Prize for Architecture in 1961, often has to suffer; the reviled Maupoleum (1974) and the extension of the Hague City Hall (1968) have since been demolished. Sijmons develops into an important church builder in the 1950s, again inspired by Le Corbusier. For the Advent Church in Loosduinen (1955) he receives the Berlage Prize in 1965. Little more is heard of Giesen.