Daniel van Ginkel and Blanche Lemco-van Ginkel
(1920-; 1923-)

Blanche Lemco-van Ginkel was born on 14 December 1923 in London. She was educated as an architect and city planner at McGill University and Harvard University. Blanche Lemco worked for a short while in Le Corbusier’s office on the project for the Unité d’Habitation in 1948. She was present at the CIAM congress in Aix-en-Provence in 1953. It was during this congress that Blanche Lemco met her future husband and partner, Dutch architect Daniel van Ginkel.
H.P. Daniel (Sandy) van Ginkel was born on 10 February 1920 in Amsterdam. He studied architecture at Elkerlyc Academy of Architecture and Applied Art, Lage Vuurse, Netherlands, and sociology at the University of Utrecht. He was a member of the Dutch CIAM group ‘de 8’. He worked together with Aldo van Eyck, among others on the school buildings for the new polder village of Nagele (1954-56). Van Ginkel organized the Doorn meeting of 1954, where the English and Dutch younger members of CIAM drew up the Doorn manifesto.

Both Van Ginkel and Lemco-Van Ginkel were involved in the early stages of Team 10 when the group was still part of CIAM. They also took part in the last CIAM congress in Otterlo in 1959 presenting their design for Bowring Park, St John’s. After their emigration to Canada in 1957 the relations with Team 10 faded. Their office would mainly deal with planning studies; projects include the planning and design of the Montréal World Expo of 1967 and studies for the preservation of the old Montréal inner city in relation to motorway construction.

Van Ginkel lectured at various schools of architecture. He is also a sculptor and printmaker. Lemco-Van Ginkel taught at numerous universities, and she was a professor at the University of Toronto from 1977 until 1982, and served as Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Landscape Architecture from 1980 to 1982. She is a fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, an honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and a founding member of the Board of Advisors for the International Archive of Women in Architecture at Virginia Tech.
The Van Ginkels live in Toronto.