Jozef Schellekens was born in Turnhout on May 15, 1909, as the eldest of three children of Joannes Ignatius ‘Ignaas’ Schellekens (March 4, 1888 – June 12, 1963), a furniture maker, and Maria Catharina Van Poppel (April 1, 1885 – February 21, 1946).
Jozef Schellekens came from an artisanal background. His father was a carpenter-furniture maker, his mother a lacemaker. Although a small business owner, his father was explicitly socialist-minded. Many of his ancestors were weavers.
Jozef was five years old when World War I broke out. No one in Turnhout had the slightest suspicion that the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in distant Sarajevo would trigger an event of unprecedented proportions that would deeply affect their daily lives. This First World War immediately drew a line under that glorious period of the “Belle Epoque” and its stately architecture.
The geographical isolation of Turnhout proved to be a blessing when World War I broke out, as the city was not on any interesting transit route for any of the armies involved. Unlike places such as Leuven, Liège, and Antwerp, which were terribly damaged, Turnhout was largely spared from brutal war violence. But that doesn’t mean the local population didn’t suffer. There was uncertainty, fear, unemployment, poverty, hunger – in short, profound misery prevailed.
Even later in life, Jozef remained quite brief in describing his wartime experiences as a child. It must have been a period of intense poverty. “We saw black snow,” he said, but he didn’t elaborate further.
There is a story that, when his sister Jeanne was born in 1916, a neighbor asked young Jozef if he was happy with the new sister his parents had “bought,” to which he reportedly replied that his parents would have done better to buy bread instead, as he hadn’t eaten all day. A rather sobering answer for a seven-year-old child.
The small jobs that were available during the war, which Ignaas Schellekens might have been able to do, were now denied to him because of his socialist past. Those red troublemakers with their strikes and resistance against the bosses shouldn’t think of coming to beg for work now. Ignaas cobbled together odd jobs here and there, even in Antwerp, but it couldn’t have amounted to much. These were hard years that naturally took their toll on Jozef’s constitution. By the end of the war, he was nine years old and had grown into a frail little man. Though they had all survived the war, a fear had crept into Jozef that would accompany him throughout his life.
Jozef attended primary school at the ‘small college’ and completed his secondary education at the State Middle School in his hometown. Showing a pronounced talent for drawing, he simultaneously attended evening classes at the Municipal Drawing Academy. Initially wanting to become a painter, his drawing teacher, Jules Taeymans (1872-1944), who also held the position of provincial architect, recognized his talent and encouraged him to become an architect. Taeymans was a calm, upright personality who had a warm interest in the Kempen landscape, local history and archaeology, technology, and art. He developed a strong sympathy for his student. Being childless himself, he saw in Schellekens the son he had wanted to have. He took care of him like a father and would play an important role in his education and career.
Likely on his advice, Schellekens went to study architecture at the Polytechnic Institute of the city of Antwerp in 1927, after completing his secondary education. This was primarily a technical education that nevertheless earned him an architect’s diploma on July 11, 1930. To secure a certain income, he combined this study with an internship at Taeymans’ office. The provincial architect’s task included designing and supervising construction works for the province and municipalities, including new construction as well as renovations, extensions, and maintenance. Taeymans was skilled in various styles which he applied according to the buildings’ purposes: Neo-Romanesque and Neo-Gothic for churches, and Flemish Neo-Renaissance for town halls. For schools, from 1929 onwards, he employed a contemporary building style inspired by the Amsterdam School: brick construction with horizontal window sections and covered with high hipped roofs.
In 1930, Jozef obtained his architecture diploma from the Polytechnic Institute. Subsequently, he completed his mandatory military service.
Modernism broke through in Antwerp’s architecture. At the world exhibition held there in 1930, among various traditional structures, two purely functionalist compositions by Léon Stynen (1899-1990) emerged: the Decorative Arts pavilion and that of the De Beuckelaer company.
After the exhibition, the area was parceled out and several residential buildings were constructed that became highlights of Antwerp modernism: Eduard Van Steenbergen’s residential cluster (1932), Geo Brosens’ apartments (1932), Léon Stynen’s own home (1933), all on Camille Huysmanslaan, and Hoste’s Pantzer apartment block (1934) on Volhardingstraat. These developments supported progressive architecture students in their belief that a new era had dawned, a new culture to whose construction they could contribute with their architecture.
Schellekens, not satisfied with his polytechnic diploma, continued his architectural studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp in 1931 after completing his military service. Simultaneously, he could resume work as a clerk-draftsman for the provincial architect. In the morning he worked at his office in Turnhout, in the afternoon he attended classes in Antwerp, a schedule he would maintain tirelessly for five years. Schellekens had little contact with his fellow students but earned their respect, not only for his driven work ethic and eagerness to learn but especially because, as the provincial architect’s close associate, he was closely involved in real large projects. However, he found a kindred spirit in his classmate Victor Blommaert. They both took all non-compulsory courses and used their scarce free time to visit various exhibitions together in the city. Besides architecture, they were also particularly interested in other visual arts. At the Academy, they made contact with sculpture professor Ernest Wijnants and his student Albert Meertens, and with painter Albert Van Dyck (1902-1951). Schellekens dreamed of a new integration of painting and sculpture in architecture.
The architectural education at the Antwerp Academy was still entirely oriented toward the past at that time. The art and architectural history course, taught by the flamboyant Ary Delen (1883-1963), didn’t extend beyond the 19th century. The studio teachers were predominantly traditionally minded. Jos Evrard (1874-1952), who led the first composition year, built in various neo-styles. Jef Huygh (1885-1946), who was responsible for the graduation year, developed in his practice a personal, idiosyncratic art deco, sometimes with Byzantine influences. Nevertheless, both teachers gave their students great freedom. Many of them had a lively interest in contemporary international developments and demonstrated this in their designs. Renaat Braem (1910-2001) had taken the lead in this. Already in 1929, he had mastered the idiom of international functionalism. In Huygh’s composition class in 1930, he presented spectacular projects that showed a fusion of constructivism and Bauhaus aesthetics. His radical modernism posed a challenge and stimulus for his fellow students, not only his classmates Nachman Kaplanski and Jules Wellner but also the students of subsequent years, including Schellekens. The latter also wasn’t satisfied with academic education but, like Braem, familiarized himself with contemporary developments through self-study, both in the Academy’s library and the City Library. He explored various journals, particularly De Bouwgids (published by the Antwerp Circle for Architecture), Opbouwen (published by Huib Hoste), Bouwkundig Weekblad (from the Amsterdam society Architectura et Amicitia) and Wendingen (the Amsterdam School journal published by Wijdeveld). In Opbouwen (1931, no. 7) he undoubtedly read the remarkable article ‘The Foundations of Modern Architecture’ by Stan Leurs, engineer-architect and eminent architectural historian. Leurs opposed the proliferating ornament in art deco and declared that true modern architecture concentrated on the essential: building pure volumes and creating space. He believed that this pure and clear architecture, as practiced by Le Corbusier in France, Oud in the Netherlands, May in Germany, and Hoste in Flanders, belonged to the highest expressions of contemporary culture.
Strongly imbued with this spirit, Schellekens and his friend Blommaert manifested themselves at the Academy with distinctly modern projects. Schellekens designed a Town Hall for Deurne in a Dudok idiom, and a streamlined functionalist Terminal Station for the Left Bank. In 1933, he graduated as primus
with two modernist projects, however different: an Airport and a Village Church, with which he won the De Coster Prize (first prize of excellence with gold medal).
Meanwhile, Schellekens had started dating Mietje Vogels, a vivacious working-class girl from Turnhout. Like him of modest origins, she too wanted to work her way up and build a better life together with him. He proposed to her and they married on July 25, 1933. He promptly decided to build a house for them both and their future family. They found a spacious corner plot on the road to Mol and, perhaps inspired by Eduard Van Steenbergen’s residential cluster in Antwerp (and based on economic considerations), they conceived the plan to build a semi-detached house there. They found an interested partner in Theo Op de Beeck, who was a valued figure in local cultural life as a teacher, choir conductor, actor, director, and painter.
It goes without saying that Schellekens devoted particular energy to the design of his own house (apart from a small townhouse, his first building) and naturally his bride was closely involved. Reportedly, they formed from the start a happy and cheerful couple, connected by warm mutual affection. Inspired by early life together with her, he committed himself entirely to creating a dream house for them both and the children they looked forward to. As he planned to start his own practice, he conceived his house as a dual entity: on one hand, a private area consisting of the living room and kitchen, both situated by the garden at the rear; on the other hand, at the street side, a ‘public’ area comprising the office and a reception hall. The reception hall became a double-height space that appears all the more impressive to visitors as they access it through a narrow and low portal – after possibly waiting in a tiny speaking room. Also serving as a stairwell, this space leads to the office four steps higher, while extending in the opposite direction to the mezzanine above the entrance. It is a beautifully articulated space that is activated by light from large window sections through which it is also expressed in the facade composition. In contrast to the clear dynamics of the hall, he conceived the living room as an intimate, sheltered place, closely connected to the garden, atmospherically furnished and provided with a built-in seating area with lowered ceiling. The upper floor accommodated four bedrooms, a larger one for the couple and three smaller ones for the intended children. It can be assumed that the plan grew in consultation with Theo Op de Beeck who, as a cultural figure, received numerous visitors and needed a studio as an amateur painter. Schellekens designed two almost identical houses which he connected at right angles. Their floor plans are nearly (rotated) mirror images of each other, and joined together they form a complex L-shape that articulates the street corner. It is a form with an outer corner that welcomes visitors and an inner corner that opens onto a shared garden.
The inner corner is formed by the living rooms at right angles to each other, the outer corner by the gable ends standing at right angles. The whole appears as a cluster of robust volumes, executed in Kempen brick and opened up with various types of windows, all made from thin steel profiles. The windows and small windows, the large window sections, the horizontal and vertical strip windows articulate themselves on the canvas of the brownish-yellow brick into lively constructivist compositions. The gable ends of both houses are distinguished by the characteristic large window section that occupies most of their upper floor: two enormous lattice windows which, built up from narrow horizontal strips, mark the two reception halls and emphasize their respective entrances.
Schellekens paid special attention to his own interior. He clothed the walls of his living room in subtly harmonizing colors and in certain places finished the reveals of the windows with marbriet, a colored and marbled opaque glass. Furthermore, he designed most of the furniture himself, both the built-in cabinets which he assembled by hand together with his father, and tubular steel furniture based on Mart Stam’s model, which he had executed by the local blacksmith. He also conceived several murals which he executed himself in the reception hall, living room, and master bedroom.
Through all this, through its robust and expressive exterior and its refined interior, through its consistent contemporary aesthetics, this semi-detached house that Schellekens completed in 1936 at age 27 was at that time about the purest and most complete example of modernist architecture in Turnhout and surroundings. It was a model of brick modernism, which had been initiated in Antwerp by Eduard Van Steenbergen and in Turnhout by Stan Leurs.
While the semi-detached house was under construction, Schellekens continued his architectural studies at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Antwerp, in Jos Smolderen’s ‘Architecture’ class, a postgraduate program established in the Academy building on Mutsaertstraat. He again participated in several architectural competitions, this time in friendly rivalry with Victor Blommaert. In 1935, he won the biennial De Keyser Prize, in 1936 as primus the triennial Leonard Blomme Prize. That same year, Blommaert won the Prix de Rome, with Schellekens being awarded third place.
While he was repeatedly honored in Antwerp, Jozef did not receive the recognition he had counted on in Turnhout. His fellow citizens, both common people and local intellectuals, were completely alienated by the modernism he introduced in his hometown. His house, which today is recognized as an icon of Belgian modernism, quickly became known in Turnhout vernacular as ‘the glass shed’. Far from exerting the inspiring influence the architect had intended, the house seemed to repel potential clients. Moreover, after the stock market crash of 1929, an economic recession caused private housing construction to decline sharply. As a result, after completing the semi-detached house, which is now protected as a monument, he received no further commissions. Fortunately, he was still employed as a clerk-draftsman at the office of the provincial architect. This allowed him to provide for his growing family. His first daughter Mia was born in 1935, the second, Lydia, a year later. And when Taeymans retired in 1937, he applied to succeed him.
On November 1 of that year, Schellekens, only 28 years old, was appointed provincial architect for the Turnhout district, based on his numerous distinctions and his experience in the provincial office, and supported by his mentor Taeymans. This appointment marked the beginning of a new era for Schellekens in more ways than one.
Instead of commuting daily to the Antwerp Academy, he now headed an important provincial service located on the Grand Market of Turnhout. His position immediately granted him a certain status. The tasks and responsibilities it entailed were considerable. They included not only new construction projects assigned by the provincial government but also permanent supervision and maintenance of buildings under provincial jurisdiction: churches and parsonages as well as town halls and schools. His position brought him into contact with higher circles, with the provincial governor and members of the permanent deputation, with local administrators and notables, including the clergy, with whom he had to consult about the aforementioned projects and tasks. However, these contacts could not yield additional private commissions. The provincial architect was forbidden to maintain a private practice. The regularity of official life, however, allowed him to devote more time and attention to his personal life and family. Judging by the woodcuts of domestic scenes he made in the late 1930s, it was a happy time.
The new construction projects he completed as provincial architect before 1940 were mainly limited to the construction or expansion of five village schools: in Welcherderzande, Hulshout, Oud-Turnhout (boys’ school), Grobbendonk, and Oevel. They consisted of a main block of two or three classrooms, connected via a lateral corridor to lower blocks for services, medical examination, and storage spaces, all covered with flat roofs. They were simple examples of brick modernism, probably inspired by Stan Leurs’ school in Dessel-Witgoor from 1931-35. The school in Oevel, however, was a white-plastered building that could pass as a modest example of International Style. These purely modernist projects probably met with some resistance from local administrators, but simple and sturdy as they were, they could be defended as an appropriate response to the meager budget necessitated by the prevailing economic conditions.
While these projects were under construction, Schellekens became closely involved with traditional architectural heritage. Officially responsible for the good condition of public property, he was required to regularly travel throughout the region to inspect the condition of churches, chapels, parsonages, town halls, and schools, to identify any damage or mutilations, and, if necessary in consultation with the Commission for Monuments and Landscapes, to propose and execute repairs. In this way, he acquired a thorough knowledge of the built heritage of his region, while also becoming captivated by the beauty of the landscape.
He admired the anonymous but highly functional architecture of the old houses and farms, recognizing villages as perfect urban organisms that, each having grown in a specific way in a particular situation, expressed in their form the character of their population.
During the war, Schellekens showed himself far from accommodating towards the German authorities. As a civil servant, he refused to cooperate with the General Commissariat for National Reconstruction, an administration established by the occupier in June 1940 with the aim of quickly restoring war-affected cities and villages to erase traces of the invasion and favorably dispose the population. The Architecture and Urban Planning department of the Commissariat was headed by Raphaël Verwilghen, one of the founders of urban planning thinking in Belgium, who took advantage of the war situation to implement efficient urban planning policies in liberal Belgium for the first time. Verwilghen secured the cooperation of Stan Leurs (director of the monuments preservation division) and Henri van de Velde (director of the Architecture division), but Schellekens declined his invitation to serve in the directorate of the Urban Planning division. And when Schellekens was summoned by the German administration in December 1940 as a representative of the Provincial Government to discuss their plan for the Greater Metropolitan Area of Antwerp, he was the only official who opposed the approval of this plan. In Turnhout, he refused to join the local branch of the VNV, which did not prevent him from being appointed by the German authorities as district commissioner for passive air defense, with the task of recording damage from Allied bombings on site.
Meanwhile, Schellekens continued his work as provincial architect. He designed five schools and prepared the restoration of several buildings that were heavily damaged during the 18-day campaign: the town hall of Oud-Turnhout, the Saint Lucia Chapel in Meersel-Dreef, the Chapel of Assistance in Arendonk, and the Norbertine parsonage in Westerlo. At the same time, he felt driven to further develop and disseminate the ideas he had outlined in his book. He found a medium for this in ‘Architecture and Reconstruction’, the monthly magazine established by the General Commissariat for National Reconstruction to inform the professional world about its objectives, activities, and projects. Remarkably, a discussion about architecture developed in this journal, particularly about the building style to be applied in reconstruction. Already in the second issue (February 1941), Huib Hoste took a position against rising traditionalism in ‘Space and Housing’, specifically against those “who brandish the word NATIONALISM at every turn” and understand it to mean: “build houses just as our ancestors did.” He defended modernist architecture and urban planning, particularly the CIAM-developed housing: homes for ‘complete living’, bathed in sunlight and greenery, equipped with sun terraces, a functional kitchen, bathroom, and toilet – a concept he considered incompatible with traditional housing.
Schellekens, who first positioned himself with several contributions about village expansion and regional planning, responded to Hoste in BkW 1941/8 with the article ‘Nationalism in Architecture’.
Looking back at recent developments in architecture, he noted that after World War I, as a result of a pursuit of international brotherhood, an international style had emerged: the New Objectivity, an abstract, rationalist style that had developed independently of national building traditions, with an eye toward generalized industrial production. Schellekens admitted that his generation had been seduced by this architectural style “because we stood in full admiration of the machine. Because the distinction between the new and the authentic was made impossible for us.” However, he now considered it foolish to have broken so radically with all local traditions, in the illusion that a new culture could be built on the basis of “some scientific formulas.” He believed that the New Objectivity had been merely a brief episode that was now completely outdated. Meanwhile, the rediscovery and “a renewed love for our national heritage” had led to a renewed interest in classical and regional forms.
“It is undeniable that in all European countries, a strong national consciousness has grown in recent years. This (…) naturally went hand in hand with a glorification of earlier cultural possessions. People began to pay attention to things that previously escaped notice. They began to discover and love in their surroundings what could not be seen anywhere else. (…) We need not imitate what can be considered normal in other countries. We must create something that is ours, that is true, that reflects our landscape and our people. (…) We have changed. We want to think normally again. The New Objectivity wanted to draw attention to itself: however, it has testified to an aesthetic inability and a spiritual defect. The younger generation will feel nationally. The expressions of national architecture must be instilled in youth: they need to be studied carefully and fully understood.”
As examples of national architecture, Schellekens showed images of the Hoogstraten town hall from 1530 (with the caption “Such architecture only fits in the Kempen”) and the Turnhout Beguinage from 1664, which he qualified as an example of “true objectivity.”
Hoste responded with an article, published (in BkW 1942/1) under the title ‘Beware of Slogans and Catchwords’. He stated that the term ‘nationalism’ covered many meanings and was sometimes used as a cover for a lack of design talent.
“‘National architecture’ presupposes first and foremost architecture; if that is missing, then suddenly the winged word collapses, disappears into nothingness.” For what exactly is to be understood by national, Flemish architecture? Does one mean the imitation of some Flemish style from the past? In that case, however, there can be no question of creative activity, thus also not of architecture. The continuation of one’s own Flemish tradition is not to be found in style imitation but in faithfulness to certain constants. The history of Flemish art teaches that our artists were always very alert to international developments. They assimilated Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque without problems. They “did not judge it un-national to adopt these languages, but they handled them without giving up the peculiarities of their dialect. Doesn’t this prove that the Flemings who practice New Objectivity follow and uphold an old tradition, as they have joined a line of thought, an architectural movement that has conquered not only Western Europe but many other areas beyond?”
Schellekens countered Hoste a month later with ‘Spiritual Problems and Urban Planning’, an article he began with a quote from Granpré Molière. The Delft professor saw the situation at the time, the war that is, as “a tremendous struggle that has begun for the renewal of culture, i.e., for the restoration of the primacy of spirit over matter; which could again give unity, firmness, greatness to life; which would again transform individuals into persons and the masses into community; and which finally would provide the conditions for a real urban planning art and urban culture.” Entirely in line with this, Schellekens saw the New Objectivity as the endpoint of the declining line that had begun two centuries earlier with the Encyclopedists. The New Objectivists were dreamers without a sense of reality who tried to introduce an apparently ideal form world to the masses. However, they were filled with a materialistic attitude to life that found its origin in the positive sciences and the associated glorification of the machine. “In architecture, the utility principle was declared all-saving.” While functionalist architecture made life easier, it also encouraged residents to be lazy, to be idle. “In high-rise buildings, barracks, and flats there was no more talk of the large family, no place anymore for those who still had heart; the human desire for adventure was smothered (…) while cowardice, laxity, spiritual laziness, and degeneration grew and flourished.” Schellekens mentioned in passing that he had previously, as a young combative idealist, given in to the temptations of the New Objectivity, but that he had gradually come to realize that this architectural style was limited exclusively to satisfying immediately tangible, material needs and had no eye for spiritual dimensions. He now considered the time ripe to develop an architecture based on “full humanity, a desire for deeper and richer life, the feeling of spiritual values.”
Hoste responded to this (in BkW 1942/6) that architecture, both old and modern, speaks to people spiritually through its visual means, through its proportions, rhythm, volume and spatial effects, surface division, and the play of light on matter. But in BkW 1942/9, Schellekens clarified that the spiritual values he had in mind were of a very different nature: he was talking about “intuition, vision, idea, deeper spiritual insight, religious idealism, metaphysical feelings, moral discipline, respectful attention, and craftsmanship.” Particularly in urban planning, it was more specifically important “to understand the spirit of a city or village to seek the means to improve the human environment.” For, in Bardet’s words: “le problème de la cité est un problème d’âme”. That settlements originally had a soul could still be experienced in a number of well-preserved villages.
“In small settlements, well-protected from urban commotion, there still live authentic and life-loving village people, connected to nature and the soil, who have never conflicted with elementary natural laws; hardened by working from early morning until late evening. They cherish their families where a patriarchal spirit governs family life. They respect parental wisdom, respect for ancestors, for the patriarch. They do not yet know destructive ‘calculation,’ for each year the healthy, round, and hardworking wife brings another child into the world. In the home just as in the stable and in nature: each year brings life’s renewal. The people, the animals, and nature: everything speaks of abundant prosperity. The village people are religious: they share a common God and a common temple. There is a homogeneous unity. They let themselves be respectfully guided by the priest and the elite, those who have always called themselves the ‘nobility’ or the ‘nobles.’ The villager works in service: viewing everything according to the hierarchical higher order. Their farmhouse or dwelling must not reach higher or speak louder than that of their neighbor. The church with its tower dominates the entire village community. The town hall, set back from the building line, has more modest dimensions. Then the school building and guild hall come forward, followed by the rectory, the mayor’s residence, and the notary’s house. Subsequently, around the small market square, the beautiful prominent houses with their upper floors. In the streets leading to the square stand the simple, similar workers’ houses without upper floors, and around that agglomeration – more scattered – the identical-looking farms. Everything has measure and variety and stands in proper order, because the spirit of each building is characteristically expressed, because all things are composed in their right proportion.”
In line with his ‘new’ regionalist conviction, a true transformation occurred in Schellekens’ architecture in 1941. As provincial architect, he built five elementary schools in Morkhoven, Balen-Neet, Herentals, Herentals-Noorderwijk, and Meerhout, all elongated structures that, covered with a gabled roof, resembled large Campine farmhouses. All rooms were located on the ground floor, which was built using Boom bricks. The enormous roof, constructed with Flemish tiles, was little more than a formal addition. The roof space was not used as an attic. Besides lending a rural character to the school, the roof’s function was limited to providing thermal insulation for the classrooms. Additionally, Schellekens created designs for the town halls of Westerlo (1941), Veerle (1942), and Ravels (1944), all in traditional Flemish style. However, none of these were executed. He also designed expansion plans for Merksplas and Vosselaar.
To his disappointment, he had to observe how these values were gradually eroded and degraded by various arbitrary interventions, driven by profit-seeking, land speculation, ostentation, poor taste, and ignorance. He also noted that most local notables and intellectuals were indifferent to the beauty of landscape and village. They proved equally ignorant about both traditional and modern architecture. They indulged in pseudo-Flemish country houses with “thatched roofs, small windows, an abundance of jumbled roofs, gutters, dormers, and bay windows.” They had no understanding of the social importance and cultural significance of architecture and urban planning. And where urban planning existed at all, it remained limited to the territory of individual municipalities. All this led Schellekens to realize that he needed to interpret his role as provincial architect more broadly. He wanted to commit himself to responsible spatial planning for his region. He wanted to develop a comprehensive urban plan, a regional plan, not just for the Turnhout district, but for the entire province of Antwerp.
He advocated for the necessity of such a plan to the provincial government, whereupon the governor and the permanent deputation tasked him with conducting a preliminary study of the state of affairs in surrounding European countries. They sent him on a study trip to the Netherlands, France, Germany, Sweden, and Finland to research advanced insights and concepts in urban planning, particularly regional planning and the relationship between architecture and landscape. Schellekens documented his findings and conclusions in a substantial report that he submitted to the provincial government in 1939, which was subsequently published in book form in 1941 under the title ‘Architecture in our Landscape and the Urban Planning Problem.’
In this book, Schellekens takes distinctly conservative and anti-urban positions. He praises the beauty and “indigenous character” of the landscape, which he considers among the most important “sources of the deepest and most intrinsic forces of the community.” He idealizes the old villages, where in his view there originally existed a “harmonious community spirit” as well as “a spiritual, social, and economic balance.”
The beauty of buildings and utilitarian objects grew unintentionally, from functional and practical considerations. Everything strived for efficiency and durability. “Good taste was universal, as everything was reasoned based on necessities, customs, soil, and local conditions.”
In contrast, he attributes all degradation of the landscape and villages to the harmful influence of the city, particularly the metropolis: the ostentatious villas of the nouveau riche settling in the countryside, the random placement of industries and associated slum housing for workers, the decline of craftsmanship due to advancing mechanization, the brokers
who buy land with purely speculative intentions and fell centuries-old trees without scruple, the ribbon development, uncontrolled growth, and garish advertising boards. This invasion of urban elements and factors is, he believes, accompanied by detrimental moral influences: snobbery, materialism, spiritual impoverishment, superficiality, the glorification of the body, and the urge for immediate gratification of the most primary desires, resulting in a gradual decline of morals. Schellekens believes these negative developments must be countered through effective urban planning, specifically through expansion plans for each municipality, regional plans at the provincial level, and ultimately a national plan.
What vision and principles should underpin these plans? Judging by the experts he consulted during his study trips, he was exclusively interested in the ‘new’ conservative views of society and urban planning that were gaining currency at the time. In the Netherlands, he contacted J.M. Granpré Molière (1883-1972) and several prominent figures of his Delft School; in France, Gaston Bardet (1907-1989), the theorist of ‘Nouvel Urbanisme’ which he taught in Paris at his Atelier Supérieur d’Urbanisme Appliqué. Both Molière and Bardet were distinctly Roman Catholic and harbored deep pessimism regarding the increasing secularization of society. Both were fervent critics of functionalist architecture and urban planning, particularly of Le Corbusier, whom they counted among the instigators of secularization. Both sought to contribute to the restoration of Christian values through traditionalist, rural urban planning. Especially in Bardet, protagonist of a ‘culturalist’ and organic urban planning, Schellekens discovered a kindred spirit. He presumably met him in Paris in 1938, after which he began corresponding with him. Drawing on a quote from Bardet, he defines urban planning in his book as “a science and an art of order. Its task is to ensure that everything encompassed in the growth of human settlements finds its proper place within a large,
well-ordered, effective context.” For Schellekens and Bardet, urban planning did not involve designing new ideal settlements for a dreamed-of, better society, as the modernists aspired to, but rather achieving organic and orderly growth of existing settlements. Both shared an aversion to the metropolis, which they saw as a breeding ground for physical and moral decay. They preferred decentralized urban planning of villages and regional cities in close contact with nature.
What Schellekens specifically envisioned is clearly evident from the 48 pages of illustrations he included in his book. The beautiful photographs show almost exclusively traditional, rural architecture in the Flemish landscape: traditional farmhouses, wind and water mills, village scenes, parsonages, churches, monasteries, and chapels, which he alternately qualified as ‘rural poetry’, ‘simple and dignified’, ‘constructive and functional’, ‘picturesque’, ‘simple’, ‘grand’, ‘monumental and peaceful’. The series contains only one modern example: the small school he himself built in 1938 in Oud Turnhout, a modest brick volume with a flat roof that harmonizes with the horizontal lines of the landscape, – but beyond that, not a single example of a modern house, for instance by Hoste or Van Steenbergen. However, it does include some beautiful photos of ‘Le Logis’ in Bosvoorde, the clearly regionalist-inspired garden suburb by Eggericx and Van der Swaelmen.
On October 19, 1942, Schellekens’ professional activity was intersected by a profound family tragedy. His wife Mietje died in childbirth after the birth of her fourth child, – a loss that plunged him and his children into deep mourning. He found support from many friends, from his colleague architect René Van Steenbergen, from the erudite Franciscan Norbertus Broeckaert, and from his neighbor Jozef Simons, writer of Campine regional novels. With the help of his two sisters and his sister-in-law who looked after the children when needed, he tried to maintain his family somewhat. But partly due to his elevated conception of family bonds, he could not find peace with this situation.
Soon, however, his attention was drawn to a new professional challenge. In the spring of 1943, the city council of Turnhout announced an examination to fill the vacancy for the directorship of the Municipal Academy. Schellekens participated and was ranked first by the examination committee. But the city council decided differently. The majority, consisting of VNV members, set Schellekens aside and put forward a party member. However, there followed a strong reaction from several prominent figures including Stan Leurs, Jozef Muls, Jozef Simons, and Jan Van Mierlo, which ultimately led to Schellekens being appointed director of the Turnhout Academy on July 29, 1943.
Meanwhile, Schellekens had met a young lady who would soon become his second wife. Mia Van den Bosch came from Turnhout’s affluent bourgeoisie. He had met her at a celebration of the cultural association Hoger Leven of the Catholic Flemish University Extension Turnhout. They became engaged and married on October 20, 1943, a year after Mietje’s death. Mia was a very different personality. She was educated at the Sint-Ursula Institute of Our Lady of Waver, where she had been prepared for a proper bourgeois existence. She spoke French well and was artistic. She played violin and piano. She appreciated her husband as an artist and encouraged him to draw and paint. At the same time, she was pragmatic and level-headed. She positioned herself from the start as the lady of the house. She cherished her position as the wife of the provincial architect and wanted to give his children a proper bourgeois upbringing befitting his social status. Her conception of family differed entirely from the warm nest it had been until then. Without showing much empathy for the children’s grief a year after losing their mother, she wanted to turn the page on the past and begin a new chapter. How the children experienced their new situation is palpable in the portraits Schellekens made of them from 1943 onwards: charcoal drawings and paintings in soft pastel colors, stylistically closely related to the animism of Albert van Dyck, whom he knew from his academy days. The children are depicted in a domestic setting, but alone, without mother or father. Left to themselves, they make an orphaned and resigned impression. In their serious, composed facial expressions, there is nowhere a smile to be seen. It appears that depicting his children’s grief was, for the verbally introverted Schellekens, a way to express his own unprocessed grief. This does not prevent that his new marriage was of great social significance to him. His wife introduced him even more into the circles of local notables, of which he soon became a part himself. This elevation of his status confirmed him in his conservative views of architecture and society.
While Schellekens was branded as anti-German and Anglophile during the war, he was accused of collaboration after the liberation. On November 3, 1944, he was arrested in the morning by two armed resistance fighters from the Kempisch Legion and, together with about twenty other alleged collaborators, was led prisoner, arms raised, through the streets of Turnhout to the Blairon barracks. In the evening, however, he was immediately released after questioning. Also in the subsequent judicial investigation, he was cleared of all collaboration charges, after which he was rehabilitated by the Permanent Deputation and the Governor of the Province of Antwerp.
After the war, Schellekens, as provincial architect, was primarily assigned several restoration projects. He paid particular attention to the restoration of the Saint Dymphna Church in Geel (1944-53), which had been severely damaged by Allied bombing during the liberation, and to the reconstruction of Hoogstraten’s town hall. This 16th-century building was completely destroyed in late 1944 by the collapse of the tower of the adjacent Saint Catherine’s Church, which had been dynamited by retreating German troops. For the reconstruction of this building (1945-53), Schellekens could rely on measurement drawings he had made during his student years, for which he had been awarded the 3rd mention in the Henri Blomme Prize in 1934. For the conscientious restoration of the Saint Dymphna Church, he was honored with the papal distinction ‘Pro ecclesia et pontifice’. Based on these and other restorations, Schellekens was elected as a corresponding member of the Royal Commission for Monuments and Landscapes in 1947.
In his new construction projects, Schellekens initially remained true to the traditionalist line he had started in 1940. The Ter Aert school in Geel (1945-50) was still based on the type of the Campine barn. The house for Doctor Bourgeois in Ravels (1946) was a rustic villa finished with quasi-classical elements. This conservative approach also perfectly fit the post-war zeitgeist. People desired peace, a return to normal affairs, a restoration of traditions and values damaged by the war. They were both strange and dismissive towards all kinds of innovations, whether foreign or not.
At that time, Schellekens also renewed contact with his French kindred spirit Gaston Bardet. He invited him to give a lecture at the KMBA in Antwerp in early 1946 about ‘the foundations of new urbanism’. Drawing from Bergson’s ‘creative evolution’ and the emerging ecology, Bardet unfolded his urban planning and social vision: a kind of garden city conceived as a clustering of homes and services across three organizational levels. A basic cluster consisted of 5 to 15 homes housing as many families, according to Bardet the biological unit of
social life, based on the ‘eternal laws of nature’. The residential clusters grouped into neighborhoods of 50 to 150 families, the neighborhoods into village-like districts of 500 to 1500 families, united around a center with communal services (community house, church, nursery, schools, medical center, and cooperative shop). This type of settlement would house a hierarchically structured society of family communities, supported and guided by the authority of the family father.
Bardet’s lecture provoked a sharp response from Renaat Braem in the newly established magazine bouwen (March 1946). Braem, a convinced communist and, contrary to the zeitgeist, radical modernist, recognized in Bardet’s ‘social biology’ a reactionary ideology, in which he saw certain inheritances of fascism at work. He strongly opposed the submission of the community to patriarchal authority and advocated for a secularized society based on the equality of all its members and the freedom of each individual: man, woman, and child. Schellekens, who responded to Braem in the next issue of bouwen, asserted that there was broad international consensus about the principles outlined by Bardet and that Braem’s modernist ideas were definitively outdated. He confidently defended the traditional family and the authority of the family father. He also made scornful remarks about Braem’s concept of ‘the freedom of the child’. “We could seek advice on this from the ‘League for Large Families’. Family fathers could give an appropriate answer to this, but I strongly doubt whether any head of family shares Braem’s opinion. A family father is probably also a reactionary.”
Through Bardet’s influence, Schellekens was elected as a corresponding member of the Société Française des Urbanistes that same year. In the presentation Schellekens gave in Paris on that occasion, he provided an exposé of the characteristic qualities of regional building in the Kempen landscape. For his part, Bardet soon found a lasting foothold in Belgium. When in 1947 the Christian Democratic Minister of Public Works Oscar Behogne decided to establish a Christian-inspired institute for urban planning in Brussels, the Institut Supérieur d’Urbanisme Appliqué (ISUA), its administrative direction was entrusted to Brother Raymond of the Sint Lucas School in Schaerbeek, while the academic leadership was given to Bardet. The ISUA, which started in 1947 in the premises of the aforementioned school, was intended as the Catholic counterpart to the Institut Supérieur d’Urbanisme of La Cambre established in 1946, whose education was judged by Behogne and his supporters as ‘socialist’, even ‘communist’. Bardet’s ideas showed many similarities with the ideology of building and living that was being propagated and implemented by the Christian Democrats in Belgium at that time. In its Christmas Program of 1945, the CVP, wary of collective housing, had defended a ‘personalistic’ housing policy aimed at housing the population in individual single-family homes. Bardet taught at ISUA in Schaerbeek until 1961, thereby exerting a significant influence on urban planning thinking in Belgium.
In that extremely conservative climate, Schellekens harbored growing irritation about his own house, the icon of modernism he had created 10 years earlier and which he now labeled as a youthful sin. Partly at his wife’s instigation, he decided to radically transform his interior. Tiles disappeared under fixed carpeting, murals behind wallpaper, built-in furniture was torn out and used as firewood, and he dragged the modernist tubular steel furniture outside to be taken away with the garbage. He replaced them with robust self-designed oak cabinets, tables, and chairs in an elementary neo-Flemish style. Moreover, he conceived the plan to better align his house with its surroundings by adding a gabled roof with Flemish tiles. When Stan Leurs talked him out of this idea, he let ivy overgrow the facades so that the modernist features of the building were hidden from passersby. Finally, inside his double-height reception hall, he had a mezzanine installed where he set up his painting studio.
Schellekens confirmed and crowned his dedication to the Kempen heritage in 1949 with the publication of Turnhout, the capital of the Kempen, a book published in the heritage series of Allert de Lange in Amsterdam. He highlighted the morphological growth of the city, the typological development of its houses, and its most important monuments, each time illustrated with pen drawings by his hand.
Schellekens’ conservative views also manifested in the attitudes he displayed as provincial architect. He could be very opinionated in his assessment of new construction projects that were submitted to his critical eye, particularly when it concerned projects by younger architects such as Eugène Wauters (1923-2008), Carli Vanhout (1931-2000), and Paul Neefs (1933-2009). He couldn’t understand what drove them to reconnect with the modernism of the interwar period, a movement he considered dead and buried. The traditionalist line to be followed was clear to him, and he opposed everything that went against it.
While averse to innovations in architecture, Jozef showed active interest in developments in contemporary painting. He documented himself and regularly visited exhibitions, both in Antwerp and Brussels as well as in Amsterdam and Paris. Moreover, he felt driven to participate in these developments in his own way. He used to spend all his free time in the studio he had installed on the mezzanine of his reception hall. While he previously focused on glass art, wood and linocuts, pen and charcoal drawings, from 1947 onwards he devoted himself exclusively to drawing and painting. He explored multiple styles, focusing primarily on the female figure, either in silhouette, elongated as in Modigliani, or with heavy contours as in Rouault. In 1949, he created several somber expressionist works in which he processed his dismay about the horrors of the concentration camps, a reality he had learned about through reading The 25th Hour, a novel by Romanian writer Virgil Gheorgiu. Subsequently, he experimented with various visual languages, seeking his own answers to Picasso, De Chirico, Miro and Mondrian, to arrive at a form of colorful abstraction in the 1950s, usually with ‘the city’ as theme. Thus, in his mature years, he gave himself over to the passion he had to renounce in his youth. Painting became for him the appropriate medium to express his sensibility – a sensibility he shielded from his environment in everyday life, not only in his professional milieu but also within his family.
At home, he positioned himself as a strict pater familias, a role in which he found it difficult to verbalize his parental feelings. Especially with his eldest son Paul, he had a complicated, difficult relationship. Visually gifted, Paul expressed himself through drawing and painting from an early age. Barely 10, he made somber paintings in his father’s expressionist style. It was his way of seeking communication with a man with whom he struggled to find verbal contact. “We didn’t so much experience him as a father, rather as a painter,” according to Paul. Pleased with his son’s visual talent, Jozef Schellekens expected him to become an architect.
He sent him to school at the Jesuit College in Turnhout, but to his disappointment, Paul encountered serious learning difficulties there. Despite, or perhaps because of, his father’s strict, often heavy-handed approach, he failed in the sixth year and in the first years of Greek-Latin humanities. His father was at his wit’s end. Paul got one last chance in the modern humanities at Sint-Victor Institute, “otherwise he would have to become a spotlight operator like his grandfather.” At Sint-Victor, run by the Brothers of Charity, Paul flourished. He excelled in gymnastics, drawing, singing, and recitation. Afterward, he emerged as a brilliant student at the National Higher Institute for Architecture and Urban Planning (NHIBS), the new architecture institute connected to the Antwerp Academy.
Around 1950, Jozef Schellekens’ architectural conception took an improbable turn from regionalist to neoclassical and ultimately to late modern. The first major new construction assignment he executed as provincial architect after the war was the open-air theater in the Rivierenhof park in Deurne. It was a long-term project. The original design dated from 1938, the second from 1943, the final from 1949. Although transformed and simplified, the formal concept from the 1930s remained recognizable in the result completed in 1953. It became an ensemble in a strict, ornament-free neoclassical design language, reminiscent of Italian architecture from the fascist period. The classical semicircular theater, which seats 1,350 spectators, is defined by three monumental light towers equipped with the most modern lighting and film projection techniques. It is accessible via a monumental forecourt, an oval square bordered by an elementary bare colonnade and adorned with a sculpture by Pol van Esbroeck depicting dramatic art. Both forecourt and theater breathe a classical spirit, but are connected in an unclassical manner. Although itself axially grafted onto the centrally located Rivierenhof castle, the forecourt does not lead axially but laterally at the rear to the theater. Both spaces are connected like organs.
The entire complex is situated on an artificial island, completely surrounded by various ponds and canals. The austere character of the neoclassical design language is tempered by the ensemble being fully integrated into the relief, water, and greenery of the park.
In a couple of town halls he subsequently built, the classical tradition remained perceptible but certain modernist characteristics also emerged. The town hall of Varendonk (1954-57) was an extremely simple and fresh little building. The flat white facade contained no windows, only a slightly eccentrically placed front door. All windows were located, asymmetrically arranged, in the rear facade. The town hall of Ravels (1956-58) appears more monumental. The facade is marked by the large vertical, 9-part window section of the council chamber, whose piers continue on the ground floor. However, it is far from a classical symmetrical composition. The main entrance, emphasized by a double flight of stairs and the projecting balcony of the first floor, forms the pivot of an asymmetrical balance between the aforementioned large window section and the blind wall of the office volume on the left, which bears the municipal coat of arms.
In the mid-1950s, a turning point occurred in Belgian architecture. The younger generation of architects trained after the war came forward with a fresh modernism, often inspired by Scandinavian or American examples. Large modern complexes arose, not only in and around the major cities but also in rural areas. Thus, from 1954, the Nuclear Center of Mol was established in the heart of the Kempen, a complex that included, besides three nuclear reactors, several laboratories, offices and conference spaces, as well as some residential areas and schools. The entire complex, designed by a team of Brussels architects under the leadership of Jacques Wybauw, all graduates of La Cambre, was naturally conceived in a functional modern building style, a style in which influences of Arne Jacobsen, Alvar Aalto and Mies van der Rohe were recognizable. As provincial architect, Schellekens received this project for approval, but it’s hardly conceivable that he could have opposed the architecture of this national public utility project, or that he would have dared to demand the buildings be dressed in a regional Kempen style. Once this project was accepted, it naturally became less evident to oppose his younger Kempen colleagues who submitted motivated and persistent modernist housing projects. Moreover, he was soon confronted in the international trade press with a general revival of modernism in the Western world. Modern architecture manifested itself in several vital movements, as legitimate and inevitable as the modern painting in which he had immersed himself with dedication since 1946. What he couldn’t fail to notice meanwhile was the steady penetration of modernity into everyday life, both through American films and music and in the form of electrical household appliances and sanitary comfort, televisions and cars, all in streamlined modern design.
And last but not least, the resurrection of modernism was celebrated impressively at Expo 58, an event that emerged as an exuberant glorification of its own time, contemporary science and technology, and as an optimistic affirmation of a new, secularized human image – all clothed in various forms of modern architecture whose exuberant visual language garnered explicit public approval. Expo 58 was a milestone in Belgium’s modernization process. It played a catalyzing role in transforming the attitude and taste of the Belgian population. It was a significant factor in their emancipation from traditional forms and norms.
The conservative regionalism that Schellekens had posited until 1949 as the evident, generally accepted view of life and architecture was thus entirely overtaken by actual developments within the span of a few years and pushed aside as a marginal phenomenon. It was an overwhelming change that filled the Turnhout provincial architect with intense worries and doubts. It is said that he was plagued by chronic headaches during this time. Under the pressure of the unstoppable and successful rise of modernism, he found himself compelled to gradually adjust his views. Eventually, he adapted to the factual situation and reconnected with the modernism he had turned his back on 20 years earlier.
This latter point is clearly evident in his most remarkable post-war project, the development of the Provincial Domain Zilvermeer in Mol (1956-59), not far from the aforementioned nuclear center. He first executed the general layout, profiling the existing sand extraction lake with a semicircular beach, constructed with the white sand of the region (1956-57). Subsequently, he designed the beach building (1958-59), an elongated curved structure that partially encompasses and emphasizes the shape of the beach. Perhaps Schellekens borrowed this concept from Maxime Wijnants who had already applied it in 1939 in the Domain of Hofstade, but he developed it into an elementary and elegant gesture, executed in concrete, steel and glass. The building consists of a concrete skeleton of 46 bays that unfold fan-like around the beach. At the rear, it houses wooden changing rooms, 42 for men and 42 for women, while the rows of lockers simply stand under the concrete cross beams. At the front, the building looks out onto the beach with a fully glazed facade and is continuously provided with a spacious canopy. The flat roof is designed as a terrace with a cafeteria in the middle. Originally, this terrace was accessible via two steel external staircases whose graceful design clearly bore the stamp of Expo 58. Their landing overlooking the beach was supported by V-shaped pillars that also carried a fish-shaped sun shield balanced by an elegant ‘tail’. Furthermore, Schellekens had provided the roof terrace with wooden rotating windscreens. However, these had to be removed after two years, as they raised objections from the local clergy who felt they offered young couples too much privacy. This intervention could naturally not detract from the clear, open character of the whole that still breathes an atmosphere of freedom, uninhibitedness and relaxation. It is and remains a pure and clear building in which no trace of regionalism or authoritarian monumentality can be detected anymore. Schellekens’ return to modernism is confirmed in his subsequent new construction projects, for example the Schools in Geel (1960), Weelde (1960) and Wortel (1959-63).
For his final turnaround from radically traditional to clearly late modern, Schellekens, introverted as he was, never gave an explanation anywhere. But once he had established his new conviction and put it into practice, he did not fail to make it publicly known. In a lecture he gave in 1962 to the Catholic Flemish University Extension in Turnhout, he told his stunned audience of Kempen cultural leaders without further explanation: “There is no Kempen culture. The Kempen was too poor for too long to create culture, and what the Kempen has produced in terms of painting, music, folk dance, folklore etc. over some 50 years, can be called rather poor. Since our culture will become increasingly international, we would do better not to speak of Kempen culture anymore. What we should do, however, is awaken cultural unrest in our Kempen people and create opportunities for young talents to develop their personality.”
Perhaps this call to awaken cultural unrest (which stood in stark contrast to his conviction 20 years earlier that youth should be instilled with ‘expressions of national architecture’) was not unrelated to the restless curiosity his son Paul displayed during his architectural studies. For him and his fellow students, modernism was a self-evident matter. Together with them, he regularly undertook study trips during holidays to the Netherlands to familiarize himself with the New Objectivity and the work of the Forum generation, and to France to study Le Corbusier’s masterpieces. In 1962, he participated in the first Indesem Seminar at TH Delft, where he connected with Jaap Bakema, Aldo van Eyck, and other members of Team 10. Afterward, he made an extensive study trip throughout the USA where he closely studied Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie houses and Paul Rudolph’s brutalism.
It was on July 10, 1963, during a vacation at “Het Zilvermeer” that he suddenly felt unwell after dinner around 7:00 PM. He tried to stand up, complained of a splitting headache, became dizzy, and eventually collapsed onto a bed. During the transfer to the hospital in Mol, he repeatedly touched his head, indicating an excruciating headache. However, by the time they arrived, he was already in a coma and barely responding to external stimuli.
The neurological diagnosis indicated that he had suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage. He remained alive for three more days until his son Paul, who had been traveling, was able to say goodbye to him.
Jozef died on July 13, 1963, at the age of 54, exactly one month to the day after his father Ignaas Schellekens had passed away.
He was buried in the family grave in Turnhout, which he had designed upon the death of his first wife Mietje.