Dom Hans van der Laan
Dom Hans van der Laan was a Dutch Benedictine monk and architect, and a key figure in the Bossche School.
The monk-architect occupied a distinctive position in twentieth-century architectural history. Amid the conflict between traditionalists and modernists in the Netherlands, he formulated a perspective and a formal language entirely his own. His theories on numerical proportion in architecture are still studied and passed on today.
Biography
Hans van der Laan was born in Leiden in 1904 into a family of architects: his father and his brothers Jan and Nico all worked in the profession. He was ordained a priest in 1934, after which he became increasingly immersed in liturgical design and architecture.
After the Second World War, van der Laan and his brother Nico were called on to lead the reconstruction of Catholic architecture. In 's-Hertogenbosch he directed the course in Ecclesiastical Architecture, dedicated specifically to the building of churches, and it was from this initiative that the Bossche School grew, with van der Laan as its principal architect and theoretician. The focus throughout was on what he regarded as the foundation of all architecture: well-proportioned dimensions on a human scale. His built legacy is modest in number but not in weight, comprising seven buildings, among them several monasteries, a chapel and a church library.
Models and collaborations
Van der Laan's search for the essence of architecture led him to a comprehensive theory of space, shape and size. At its centre stands the plastic number, a three-dimensional extension of the golden ratio that governs the proportional relationship between the thickness, length and width of architectural elements. He applied the same principles well beyond buildings, designing liturgical objects, notebooks, uniforms and furniture.
Van der Laan's buildings and his writings share one preoccupation: the laws of architecture and the relationship between humanity and nature. As a theorist he devoted a significant part of his life to form, proportion and the human experience of architectural space.