Hans van der Laan

Benedictine monk Dom Hans van der Laan believed like many of his contemporaries at the beginning of the 20th century that a continuation of the neo-styles was no longer possible and that a completely new approach was called for. Van der Laan proceeded to develop a new theory of his own, which he described in books and put to practice in a number of impressive buildings, in this way inspiring generations of architects until this very day. According to him buildings are meant to be spaces in which people feel naturally at home. He developed a system of measurements that is based on and corresponds with human perception. Initially he presented this theory during a lecture series in Den Bosch in The Netherlands, hence the name Bossche School came into usage for a group of architects and artists who make use of an idiom of forms based on the Plastic Number, the system of measurements discovered by Van der Laan.