Jozef Schellekens was born in Turnhout on May 15, 1909, the eldest of the 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 lace maker. Although a small business owner, his father was outspokenly socialist. 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 lead to an event of unprecedented proportions that would deeply affect their daily lives. The First World War also immediately drew a line under the 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 because the city was not on any transit route that was useful to the armies involved. Unlike places like Leuven, Liège, and Antwerp which were terribly damaged, Turnhout was largely spared from the brutal violence of war. But that doesn’t mean the local population didn’t suffer. There was uncertainty, there was fear, there was unemployment, there was poverty, there was hunger, in short, there was grim misery.
Even later in life, Jozef would only briefly describe his war experiences as a child. It must have been a period of intense poverty. “We’ve seen black snow,” he said, but he didn’t elaborate further.
There is a story that, on the birth of his sister Jeanne in 1916, a neighbour asked young Jozef if he was happy with the new sister his parents had ‘bought’, to which he supposedly replied that his parents should have bought bread instead because 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 and that Ignaas Schellekens might have been able to do were denied to him because of his socialist past. Those red devils with their strikes and resistance against the bosses shouldn’t think of coming to beg for work now. Ignaas scraped together odd jobs here and there, even in Antwerp, but it couldn’t have been much. These were hard years that naturally had their impact on Jozef’s constitution. By the end of the war, he was nine years old and had grown into a frail little man. They had all survived the war but a fear had crept into Jozef that would accompany him for the rest of his life.
Jozef received his primary education at the ‘klein college’ and completed his secondary education at the State Middle School in his home town. Exceptionally gifted in drawing, he simultaneously attended evening classes at the Municipal Drawing Academy. Initially, he wanted to become a painter but 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 keen interest in the Campine landscape, local history and archaeology, technology, and art. He developed a strong sympathy for his student. 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.
Possibly on his advice, after completing his secondary education Schellekens began studying architecture at the Polytechnic Institute in the city of Antwerp in 1927. This was primarily a technical training that nevertheless earned him an architect’s diploma on July 11, 1930. To ensure a certain income, he combined this study with an internship at Taeymans’ office. The task of the provincial architect involved designing and supervising the construction works in the province and municipalities, which included new buildings as well as renovations, expansions and maintenance. Taeymans was proficient in various styles which he applied according to the purpose of the buildings: 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, amidst the 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 ended, the area was parcelled out and a number of the residential buildings that were constructed are considered highlights of Antwerp modernism: Eduard Van Steenbergen’s residential cluster (1932), Geo Brosens’ apartments (1932), Léon Stynen’s own home (1933), all buildings on Camille Huysmanslaan, and Hoste’s Pantzer residential block (1934) on Volhardingstraat. These developments supported the progressive architecture students in their idea 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 in 1931 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp after completing his military service. At the same time, he was able to 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 daily routine he would maintain tirelessly for five years. Schellekens had little contact with his fellow students but earned a certain respect among them, not only because of his driven work ethic and eagerness to learn but especially because, as a close associate of the provincial architect, 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 subjects and used their scarce free time to visit various exhibitions in the city together. Besides architecture, they were also particularly interested in the other visual arts. At the Academy, they came into contact with sculpture teacher Ernest Wijnants and his student Albert Meertens, and with the 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, at that time, still entirely orientated towards the past. The course on art and architectural history, taught by the flamboyant Ary Delen (1883 – 1963), did not extend beyond the 19th century. The studio teachers were predominantly traditionally orientated. 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 a personal, idiosyncratic Art Deco in his practice, sometimes with Byzantine influences. Nevertheless, both teachers allowed 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. As early as 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 was also dissatisfied with the academic education but, like Braem, familiarized himself with contemporary developments through self-study, both in the Academy’s library and in the City Library. He explored various magazines, notably 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 magazine of the Amsterdam School 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 set himself against the proliferating ornament in Art Deco and declared that true modern architecture focused 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 made their prescence felt 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 top of his class with two modernist and very different projects: an airport and a village church, with which he took the De Coster Prize (first prize for excellence with gold medal).
It was during this period that Jozef Schellekens fell in love with his future wife, Mietje Vogels. Mietje was a vivacious woman who wished to build a better life with him. He proposed to her, and they married on July 25, 1933. He promptly decided to build a house for them both, and for their future family. She was a strong support and great source of inspiration for him. The residence he would design over the coming years was the culmination of two young people who, through their mutual inspiration and desire for a better future, wanted to create a place where they would enjoy spending time together.
They found a spacious corner plot on the road to Mol and, probably inspired by Eduard Van Steenbergen’s residential cluster in Antwerp (and probably also for economic reasons), they conceived the plan to build a semi-detached house there. They found an interested partner in Theo Op de Beeck who was a stalwart figure in local cultural life as a teacher, choir conductor, actor, director, and writer.
It goes without saying that Schellekens devoted an extraordinary amount of energy to the design of his own house (with the exception of a small townhouse, his first building) and naturally, his bride was closely involved too. From the very beginning they were reportedly a happy and cheerful couple, connected by a warm mutual affection. Inspired by his new life with her, he committed himself entirely to creating a dream house for them both, and for the children they were looking forward to. As he planned to start his own practice, he conceived his house as a dual entity: a private area consisting of the living room and kitchen, both situated by the garden at the rear of the building; and, at the street side, a ‘public’ area that included the office and a reception hall. The reception hall became a double-height space that is all the more impressive to visitors because they access it through a narrow and low entrance – after possibly waiting in a tiny consultation 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 windows, which also express themselves in the composition of the façade. In contrast to the bright dynamics of the hall, he designed the living room to be an intimate, sheltered place, closely connected to the garden, atmospherically furnished and equipped with a built-in seating area with a 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 developed in consultation with Theo Op de Beeck, who as a cultural figure received numerous visitors, and as an amateur painter needed a studio. Schellekens designed two almost identical houses which he connected at right angles. Their floor plans are nearly (rotated) mirror images of each other and linked together they form a complex L-shape that articulates the street corner. It is a shape 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 placed at right angles to each other, the outer corner by the end façades standing at right angles. The whole appears as a cluster of substantial volumes, executed in Campine brick and opened up with various types of windows, all made of thin steel profiles. The glazing and windows, the large panes and the horizontal and vertical strips articulate themselves on the canvas of the yellow-brown brick into lively, constructivist compositions. The end façades of both houses are distinguished by the characteristic large window section that occupies most of their upper floor: two enormous latticed windows that, constructed from narrow horizontal strips, mark the two reception halls and emphasize their respective entrances.
Schellekens paid special attention to his own interior. He clad the walls of his living room in subtly harmonizing colours and in certain places he finished the window reveals with marbriet, a coloured and marbled opaque glass. He also designed most of the furniture himself, both the built-in cabinets that he assembled by hand with his father, and tubular furniture modelled after Mart Stam, which he had made by the local blacksmith. He also conceived a number of murals that he personally painted in the reception hall, living room, and master bedroom.
Because of all this, its robust and expressive exterior and its refined interior, and its consistent contemporary aesthetics, the dual residence that Schellekens completed in 1936 at the age of 27 was, at that time, about the most pristine and complete example of modernist architecture in Turnhout and its surroundings. It was a model of the brick modernism that had been initiated in Antwerp by Eduard Van Steenbergen and in Turnhout by Stan Leurs.
While the duplex 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, and in 1936, as the top student, the triennial Leonard Blomme Prize. That same year, Blommaert won the Prix de Rome, with Schellekens being awarded third place.
While he was repeatedly honoured in Antwerp, Jozef did not receive the recognition he had counted on in Turnhout. His fellow townspeople, both the common folk and the local intellectuals, were completely unfamiliar with the modernism he was showcasing in his home town. His house, which today is recognized as an icon of Belgian modernism, soon became known in Turnhout vernacular as ‘the glass shack’. Far from exerting the attractive pull that the architect intended, the house seemed to repel potential clients. Moreover, after the stock market crash of 1929, there was an economic recession that greatly reduced private home construction. This is why after the completion of the duplex, which is now protected as a monument, he received no commissions at all. Fortunately, he was still employed as a clerk-draftsman at the office of the provincial architect. This allowed him to provide for his family, which had soon expanded. His first daughter, Mia, was born in 1935, the second, Lydia, a year later. And when Taeymans retired in 1937, Schellekens applied for his succession.
On 1 November that year, Schellekens, at only 28 years old, was appointed provincial architect for the Turnhout district by virtue of his numerous distinctions and his experience in the provincial office, and supported by his mentor Taeymans. With this appointment, a different era began for Schellekens in more than one respect.
Instead of commuting daily to the Antwerp Academy, he now headed up an important provincial service located on the Grote Markt in Turnhout. His position immediately granted him a certain status. The tasks and responsibilities it entailed were considerable. They included not only the new construction projects assigned to him by the provincial administration but also the permanent supervision and maintenance of buildings under provincial jurisdiction: churches and rectories 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 on the aforementioned projects and tasks. However, these contacts could not yield him additional, private commissions. The provincial architect was forbidden from maintaining a private practice. The routine of official existence, 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 small 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 – 1935. The school in Oevel, on the other hand, 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 meagre budget necessitated by the prevailing economic conditions.
While these projects were being executed, Schellekens became closely involved with traditional architectural heritage. Officially responsible for the good condition of the government portfolio, he was obliged to regularly travel across the region to inspect the condition of churches, chapels, rectories, town halls and schools to identify any damage or deterioration, and, if necessary in consultation with the Commission for Monuments and Landscapes, to propose and carry out repairs. In this way, he acquired a thorough knowledge of the building heritage of his region, while also falling under the spell of the beauty of the landscape.
He admired the anonymous but highly functional architecture of the old houses and farms, he recognized the villages as perfect urban organisms that, each grown in a specific way in a particular situation, expressed in their form the character of their population.
During the war, Schellekens showed himself to be far from compliant with the German authorities. As a civil servant, he refused to cooperate with the General Commissariat for National Reconstruction, an administration established by the occupiers in June 1940 with the aim of restoring war-affected cities and villages as quickly as possible in order to erase traces of the invasion and gain favour with the population. The Architecture and Urban Planning service 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 policy in liberal Belgium for the first time. Verwilghen gained the cooperation of Stan Leurs (director of the Monuments Preservation department) and Henri van de Velde (director of the Architecture department), but Schellekens did not accept his invitation to sit on the board of the Urban Planning department. 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 of Passive Air Defense, in extension of his position at the PLB, with the task of registering 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-Luciakapel in Meersel-Dreef, the Bijstandskapel of Arendonk and the Norbertine rectory in Westerlo. At the same time, he felt driven to further develop and promote the ideas he had outlined in his book. He found a medium for this in ‘Bouwkunst en Wederopbouw’, the monthly magazine established by the Commissariat General for National Reconstruction to inform the professional field about its objectives, activities and projects. Remarkably, a discussion about architecture unfolded in this journal, particularly around which architectural style should be applied in the reconstruction. As early as the second issue (February 1941), Huib Hoste took a stand against the emerging traditionalism under the title ‘Space and Housing’, specifically against those “who brandish the word NATIONALISM at every turn” and by that mean: “build houses just like our ancestors did”. He defended modernist architecture and urban planning, particularly the housing development in CIAM: homes for ‘complete living’, bathed in sunlight and greenery, equipped with sun terraces, an efficient kitchen, bathroom and toilet – a concept he considered incompatible with traditional housing.
Schellekens, who first positioned himself with several contributions on village expansion and regional planning, responded to Hoste in BkW 1941/8 under the title ‘Nationalism in Architecture’.
Looking back on recent developments in architecture he noted that after the First World War, as a result of a pursuit of international brotherhood, an international style had emerged: the New Objectivity, an abstract, rationalistic style that had developed independently of national building traditions, with a view to generalized industrial production. Schellekens admitted that his generation was seduced by this architectural style “because we were in full admiration of the machine. Because the distinction between the new and the real was made impossible for us”. However, he now considered it foolish to break so radically with all local traditions in the illusion that a new culture could be built on the basis of “a few scientific formulas”. He was of the opinion that the New Objectivity had only been 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 (…) was naturally accompanied by a glorification of a former cultural possession. People began to pay attention to things that had previously gone unnoticed. People began to discover and love that which could be seen nowhere else in their surroundings. (…) We do not need to imitate what is considered normal in other countries. We must make something that is ours, that is true, that reflects our landscape and our people. (…) We have become different. 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 national. The expressions of national architecture must be instilled in youth: they must be studied with attention and fully understood.”
As an example of national architecture, Schellekens showed images of the Hoogstraten town hall from 1530 (with the caption “Such architecture only fits in the Campine region”) and the Beguinage of Turnhout 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 Catchphrases’. He stated that the term ‘nationalism’ encompassed many meanings and was sometimes used as a cover for a lack of design talent.
“‘National architecture’ presupposes architecture in the first place; if that is lacking, then suddenly the winged word collapses, disappears into nothingness.” For what exactly can 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, and thus not of architecture. The continuation of one’s own Flemish tradition is not to be sought in style imitation but in faithfulness to certain constants. The history of Flemish art teaches us that our artists were always very alert to international developments. They assimilated Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque without problems. They “did not consider it un-national to adopt these languages, but they used them without giving up the peculiarities of their dialect. Does this not prove that the Flemish who engage in New Objectivity are following and upholding an old tradition, as they have joined a line of thought, an architectural trend that has conquered not only Western Europe, but many other areas beyond?”
Schellekens parried Hoste a month later with ‘Spiritual Problems and Urban Planning’, an article he opened with a quote from Granpré Molière. The Delft professor saw the situation at the time, that is to say the war, as “a tremendous struggle that has begun for the renewal of culture, i.e., for the restoration of the primacy of the spirit over matter; which could once again give life unity, stability, greatness; which would return individuals into people and the masses into community; and which would finally offer the conditions for a real art in urban design and city culture.” Entirely in line with this, Schellekens saw New Objectivity as the end point of the descending line that had begun two centuries earlier with the Encyclopaedists. The New Objectivists were dreamers without a sense of reality who tried to introduce an apparently ideal world of forms 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 principle of utility was declared the sole saving grace.” While functionalist architecture made life easier, it also encouraged residents to become lazy, to indolence. “In high-rise buildings, barracks and apartments, there was no longer any talk of the large family, no place for those who still had heart; the human desire for adventure was smothered (…) while cowardice, laxity, spiritual laziness, and degeneration grew and flourished.” Schellekens incidentally let it be known that he had earlier, as a young combative idealist, given in to the temptations of 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 longing 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 concerned with “intuition, vision, idea, deeper spiritual insight, religious idealism, metaphysical feelings, moral discipline, respectful attention and craft skills.” Particularly in urban planning, it was more specifically important “to understand the spirit of a city or village in order to seek the means to improve the human environment”. Because, in the words of Bardet: “le problème de la cité est un problème d’âme” (the problem of the city is a problem of soul). The fact that settlements originally had a soul could still be experienced in a number of well-preserved villages.
“Far from the hustle and bustle of the city, in well-protected small settlements, the authentic and joyful village people still live here and there, attached to nature and the land and never having been in conflict with the elementary laws of nature; hardened by working from early morning to late evening. They love their families in which the patriarchal spirit dominates family life. They have respect for parental wisdom, respect for their ancestors and for the patriarch. They do not yet know the destructive ‘calculation’, because each year the healthy, round and hardworking woman brings one more child into the world. In the home just as in the stable as in nature: each year a rebirth of life. The people, the animals and nature: everything speaks of luxuriant abundance. The village people are religious: they have 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: he sees everything according to the hierarchical higher order. His farm or dwelling should not reach higher or shout louder than that of his neighbour. The church with its tower dominates the entire village community. The town hall, separate from the building line, has more modest dimensions. Then the school building and the guildhall push forward, followed by the parsonage, the mayor’s and notary’s residences. Then, around the small market square, the beautiful, distinguished houses with an upper floor. In the streets leading to the square stand the simple, similar workers’ houses without an upper floor, and around that agglomeration – more scattered – the farms all resembling each other. Everything has measure and variety and stands in the right order because the spirit of each building is characteristically expressed, because all things are composed in their right proportion.”
In accordance with his ‘new’ regionalist conviction, a true transformation took place in Schellekens’ architecture in 1941. As provincial architect, he built five primary schools, in Morkhoven, Balen-Neet, Herentals, Herentals-Noorderwijk and Meerhout, all elongated structures that, covered with a gabled roof, offered the appearance of large Campine farmhouses. All rooms were located on the ground floor, which was constructed from Boom bricks. The enormous roof, executed in Flemish tiles, was little more than a formal addition. The attic space was not used as a loft. Apart from giving the school a rural character, the function of the roof was limited to the thermal insulation of the classrooms. In addition, Schellekens also made designs for the town halls of Westerlo (1941), Veerle (1942) and Ravels (1944), all in a traditional Flemish style. However, none of these were executed. He also designed expansion plans for Merksplas and Vosselaar.
To his great disappointment, he also had to witness how these values were gradually affected and degraded by various arbitrary interventions, motivated by profit-seeking, land speculation, ostentation, bad taste, and ignorance. He also noticed that most local notables and intellectuals were indifferent to the beauty of landscape and village. They appeared to be as ignorant about traditional as about modern architecture. They indulged in pseudo-Flemish country houses with “thatched roofs, small windows, lots of jumble of roofs, gutters, dormers and bay windows”. They had no idea of the social importance and cultural significance of architecture and urban planning. And, to the extent that there were urban development plans at all, they remained limited to the territory of a few individual municipalities. All this led Schellekens to realize that he had to interpret his task as a provincial architect more broadly. He wanted to commit himself to a responsible spatial policy for his region. He wanted to develop a comprehensive urban plan, a regional plan, not only for the Turnhout district, but for the entire province of Antwerp.
He advocated the necessity of such a plan to the provincial government, whereupon the governor and the permanent deputation commissioned him to prepare a study on the approaches in surrounding European countries. They sent him on a study trip to the Netherlands, France, Germany, Sweden and Finland to research advanced insights and views on urban planning, particularly regional planning and the relationship of architecture to the landscape. Schellekens laid down his findings and conclusions in a voluminous report that he submitted to the provincial government in 1939, and 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 “the indigenous character” of the landscape, which he considers one of the most important “sources of the deepest and most inner forces of the national community”. He idealizes the old villages, where in his opinion originally a “harmonious community spirit” as well as “a spiritual, social and economic balance” prevailed. The beauty of the buildings and the utensils grew unintentionally, from functional and practical considerations. Everything aspired to efficiency and durability. “Good taste was commonplace as everything was reasoned out based on necessity, customs, soil and local conditions.”
In contrast, he attributes all damage to the landscape and villages to the harmful influence of the city, particularly the metropolis: the ostentatious villas of the parvenus who come to settle in the countryside, the random implantations of industries and the accompanying slum dwellings for workers, the decline of craftsmanship due to advancing mechanization, the brokers who come to buy up land with purely speculative intentions and shamelessly cut down centuries-old trees, the ribbon development, the unchecked growth and the garish advertising boards. This invasion of urban elements and factors, he thinks, is accompanied by detrimental moral influences: snobbery, materialism, spiritual impoverishment, superficiality, the glorification of the body and the urge for the immediate gratification of the most primary desires, resulting in a gradual decline of morals. Schellekens believes that these detrimental developments must be countered by an effective urban planning policy, more specifically through expansion plans for each municipality, regional plans at the provincial level and, ultimately, a national plan.
What vision and principles should underlie these plans? Judging by the experts he consulted on his study trips, he was exclusively interested in the ‘new’ conservative concepts of society and urban planning that were gaining ground at that 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 the ‘Nouvel Urbanisme’ which he taught in Paris at his Atelier Supérieur d’Urbanisme Appliqué. Both Molière and Bardet were outspoken Roman Catholics and harboured a deep pessimism towards the increasing secularization of society. Both were fervent critics of functionalist architecture and urban planning, particularly of Le Corbusier, whom they considered to be among the instigators of secularization. Both wanted 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 correspondence with him. Based 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 involved 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 do, but bringing about an 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 a 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 farms, windmills and watermills, village scenes, parsonages, churches, monasteries and chapels, which he alternately described as “rural poetry”, “simple and distinguished”, “constructive and functional”, “picturesque”, “simple”, “grand”, “monumental and calm”. The series contains only one modern example: the small school that he himself created 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 by, for instance, Hoste or Van Steenbergen. It does, however, include some beautiful photos of ‘Le Logis’ in Bosvoorde, the clearly regionalist-inspired garden city by Eggericx and Van der Swaelmen.
On October 19, 1942, Jozef Schellekens was confronted with a profound family tragedy. His wife, Mietje, died at the age of 31 while giving birth to her fourth child. This great loss plunged him and his children into deep mourning.
Mietje was laid out in the wedding dress she had worn nine years earlier. Some of the sketches that Schellekens made of his wife on her deathbed remain. Even then, during those moments of immense grief, he gave artistic form to his feelings.
He found support from friends, from his colleague, architect Rene Van Steenbergen, from the Franciscan Norbertus Broekaert, from his neighbour, writer Jozef Simons, and from Theo Op de Beeck. With the help of his two sisters and his sister-in-law, he managed to keep the family running as best as he could.
Soon, however, his attention was drawn to a new professional challenge. In the spring of 1943, the city council of Turnhout announced an exam 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 otherwise. The majority, consisting of VNV members, sidelined Schellekens and put forward a party member. However, this provoked such a strong reaction from a number of prominent figures including Stan Leurs, Jozef Muls, Jozef Simons and Jan Van Mierlo, that it ultimately led to Schellekens being appointed director of the Turnhout Academy on July 29, 1943.
Nevertheless, he would have to prepare for a new life and look for a wife and mother for his children. Of course, it was not an easy task to find a woman as a widower with four children in Turnhout at that time, when they were in the midst of the war.
During a celebration of the cultural association Hoger Leven of the Catholic University Extension in Turnhout, he met Maria Van den Bosch, 25 years old and unmarried. Her parents belonged to the wealthy bourgeoisie of Turnhout and she had enjoyed an elite education at the Saint Ursula Institute, Our Lady, in Wavre. She spoke fluent French, was artistic and played the piano. In short, she was destined by her parents to continue the traditions of the bourgeoisie of that time and even to anchor them more firmly.
In July 1943 they confirm their engagement and on October 20, 1943, almost exactly one year after Mietje’s death, the marriage between Jozef Schellekens and Maria Van den Bosch is celebrated.
We can assume that the task of starting a new family for himself and his children would have suppressed the grieving process for his first wife. On the other hand, he also seemed to feel genuine love and pride for his new wife. Maria, however, had a different personality. She was a pragmatic and level-headed woman who chose not to let the sad past burden their new relationship but instead focused on the future.
From the outset she clearly presented herself as the new wife and accepted her new family name and the associated recognition in Turnhout with gusto. She appreciated her husband as an artist and encouraged him to draw and paint. Her influence on his artistic oeuvre is certainly not to be underestimated.
What’s more, the new marriage was of great social significance for Jozef Schellekens. His wife introduced him to even more of the circles of local notables that he then became a part of. This elevation of social status confirmed in him his conservative views of architecture and society.
During that period, he was also greatly affected by the degenerative disease of his mother, who had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for several years. Whenever he was confronted with unspeakable moments of quiet sorrow, he used his talent for drawing to give shape to his inner pain. He made a number of moving sketches of her final phase of life. Eventually his mother, Maria Van Poppel, passed away in Duffel in 1946. She was barely 61 years old.
While Schellekens was branded as anti-German and an Anglophile during the war, he was accused of collaboration upon liberation. On the morning of November 3, 1944, he was arrested by two armed resistance fighters from the Campine Legion and, together with about twenty other alleged collaborators, was led with his arms raised through the streets of Turnhout to the Blairon barracks. In the evening, however, he was immediately released after questioning. In the subsequent judicial investigation, too, he was cleared of all collaboration charges, after which he was reinstated by the Permanent Deputation and the Governor of the Province of Antwerp. But the event deeply affected him.
After the war, Schellekens, as provincial architect, was primarily assigned a number of restoration projects. He paid special attention to the restoration of the Saint Dymfna Church in Geel (1944 – 1953), which had been heavily damaged by Allied bombings during the liberation, and to the reconstruction of the town hall of Hoogstraten. This 16th-century building was completely destroyed at the end of 1944 by the collapsing tower of the adjacent Saint Katharina Church, which had been dynamited by retreating German troops. For the reconstruction of this building (1945 – 1953), Schellekens could rely on survey 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 Dymfna Church, he was honoured 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 – 1950) was still based on the example 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 fitted perfectly into the post-war zeitgeist. People longed for peace, a return to normality, a restoration of the traditions and values damaged by the war. There was a strange and dismissive attitude 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 for the KMBA in Antwerp in early 1946 on ‘The Foundations of New Urbanism’. Starting from Bergson’s ‘creative evolution’ and the newly-emerging ecology, Bardet unfolded his urban planning and societal 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 that housed as many families which, according to Bardet, was the biological unit of social life, based on the “eternal laws of nature”. The residential clusters grouped into neighbourhoods of 50 to 150 families, the neighbourhoods into village-like districts of 500 to 1500 families, united around a centre with communal services (community centre, church, nursery, schools, medical centre and cooperative shop). This type of settlement would house a hierarchically-structured society of family communities, supported and guided by the authority of the father of the family.
Bardet’s lecture provoked a sharp reaction from Renaat Braem in the newly established magazine ‘bouwen’ (March 1946). Braem, a confirmed communist and, contrary to the spirit of the times, a radical modernist, recognized in Bardet’s “social biology” a reactionary ideology, in which he saw certain facets of fascism at work. He strongly opposed the subjugation 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 a broad international consensus on 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 father. He also scoffed at Braem’s concept of ‘the freedom of the child’. “We could seek advice on this from the ‘League for Large Families’. Fathers could give an appropriate answer to this, but I strongly doubt whether any head of family shares Braem’s opinion. A father is probably also a reactionary.”
Thanks to Bardet, 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 Campine landscape. For his part, Bardet soon found a lasting safe haven 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 Saint Lucas School in Schaerbeek, while the content leadership was entrusted 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 shared many similarities with the ideology around 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 the ISUA in Schaerbeek until 1961, thereby exerting a significant influence on urban planning thinking in Belgium.
Jozef Schellekens did not have a talent for participative dialogue. After all, he had grown up in a time when this kind of dialogue was not really necessary. He was rather introverted by nature.
Because he was intelligent and well read, he knew how to analytically process many of his doubts himself and, once rationally processed, he presented his findings as a complete set of ideas about which no further dialogue was expected.
But he had already experienced a lot (wars, deaths and the blow of human betrayal) that must have emotionally burdened him, and from which reason did not always provide solace.
In the extremely conservative climate of that period, Schellekens harboured a growing irritation about his own house, a paragon of modernism that he had created ten years earlier and which he now labelled as a youthful folly. He decided to radically transform his interior. Tiles disappeared under carpet, murals behind wallpaper, built-in furniture was torn out, the modernist tubular furniture was removed. He replaced the furniture with robust, self-designed oak cabinets, tables and chairs in an elementary neo-Flemish style. What’s more, he conceived the plan to align his house better with the environment by putting a gabled roof with Flemish roof tiles onto it. When Stan Leurs talked him out of that idea, he let the façades be overgrown with ivy so that the modernist features of the building were hidden from the eyes of passersby.
This period in his life, however, is particularly rich in very engaging drawings, sketches and portraits of his children. He predominantly used charcoal but there are also paintings in which he employed soft, pastel-like colours. He placed the children in a domestic environment. The children’s gazes radiate a sad resignation. He did not make a single depiction of a laughing or playing child.
We may deduce from this that through creating these very sensitive works of art, he managed to channel his emotional and often suppressed feelings.
Schellekens confirmed and crowned his dedication to Campine heritage in 1949 with the publication of ‘Turnhout, the Capital of the Campine Region’, a booklet published in the Heemschut series by 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 one illustrated with pen drawings sketched by his own hand.
Schellekens’ conservative views also manifested themselves in the attitudes he displayed as provincial architect. He could be very opinionated in his assessment of any new construction projects that were subjected 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 did not understand what possessed 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.
Despite being averse to innovations in architecture, Joseph showed an active interest in developments in contemporary painting. He documented and regularly visited exhibitions in Antwerp, Brussels, Amsterdam and Paris. What’s more, he felt driven to participate in these developments in his own way. He spent all of his free time in the studio that he had installed on the mezzanine of his reception hall. While he had 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 a variety of styles, concentrating primarily on the female form, either in silhouette, elongated as in Modigliani, or with heavy contours as in Rouault. In 1949, he created a number of sombre, expressionist works in which he processed his dismay at the horrors of the concentration camps, a reality he had learned about through reading ‘The 25th Hour’, a novel by Romanian writer, Virgil Gheorghiu. He then experimented with various visual languages, seeking his own answers to Picasso, De Chirico, Miró and Mondrian, arriving at a form of colourful abstraction in the course of the 1950s, usually with ‘the city’ as a theme.
At a mature age, he gave himself over to the passion he had had to renounce in his youth. Painting became for him the most appropriate medium through which to express his sensibility. Through art he managed to maintain a balance between the task-conscious man on the one hand and his inner sensitivity, which he kept shielded from the world in his everyday life, on the other.
At home he positioned himself as a strict pater familias, an attitude that dampened his spontaneous parental affection. But for him, strictness and discipline went hand in hand. He was not ashamed of his versatile talents and could certainly be called ambitious. For his children, too. However, he always pursued his ambitions honestly and openly without ever lapsing into misplaced arrogance. He managed to give each of his six children a different imprint of who he was and what he considered important for their upbringing. There is certainly no consensus regarding their perception of their father, as his drive, straightforwardness, and strictness were experienced differently by each of them. Ultimately, he guided them and, with completely free choice, offered them a future that was undoubtedly the right one.
Jozef Schellekens’ architectural views traced an improbable curve from regionalist to Neo-classical and, ultimately, to late modern from around 1950. The first major new construction assignment he carried out after the war as provincial architect was the open-air theatre in the Rivierenhof park in Deurne. It was a long-term project. The original design dated from 1938, the second from 1943, the final one from 1949. Although transformed and simplified, the formal concept from the 1930s remained recognizable in the result that was completed in 1953. It became an ensemble in an austere, ornament-free, Neo-classical design language, reminiscent of Italian architecture from the fascist era. The classical semicircular theatre, which seats 1350 spectators, is demarcated by three monumental light towers equipped with the most modern lighting and film projection techniques. It is accessible via a monumental courtyard, an oval square bordered by an elementary bare colonnade and adorned with a sculpture by Pol van Esbroeck that depicts the theatrical arts. The courtyard and the theatre exude a classical spirit but are connected in an unclassical manner. Although itself axially grafted onto the centrally located Rivierenhof castle, the courtyard does not lead axially but laterally at the rear to the theatre. Both spaces are connected to each other like organs.
The entire complex is located on an artificial island, completely surrounded by various ponds and canals. The austere character of the Neo-classical design language is tempered by the fact that the ensemble is fully integrated into the relief, water and greenery of the park.
In a couple of the town halls that he subsequently built the classical tradition remained tangible but certain modernist characteristics also emerged. The town hall of Varendonk (1954 – 1957) was an extremely simple and fresh little building. The flat white façade contained no windows, only a slightly eccentrically placed front door. All windows were asymmetrically arranged in the rear façade. The town hall of Ravels (1956 – 1958) appears more monumental. The façade is marked by the large, vertical, nine-part window of the council chamber, the mullions of which are continued on the ground floor. It is, however, far from a classical, symmetrical composition. The main entrance, emphasized by a double flight of steps and the protruding balcony of the first floor, forms the pivot of an asymmetrical balance between the aforementioned large window and the blank wall of the office volume on the left, on which the municipal coat of arms is displayed.
Jozef Schellekens led a busy life. His days were filled, but even he knew that occasional moments of relaxation were necessary. When the opportunity arose he would set out with his family—away from the building plans and drawing boards.
One of their favourite destinations was the coast. The salty sea air, the endless views over the waves and the simple joy of being together gave him the peace that he needed. On the beach, between building sandcastles and searching for seashells, he could momentarily detach from his work and focus entirely on his family.
These moments were rare but precious. They show a side of Jozef that is less known: the family man, the father, the husband who enjoyed the little things. And you can see this in the photos below—warm, spontaneous moments of relaxation and pleasure.
In the mid-1950s, a turning point occurred in Belgian architecture. The younger generation of architects trained after the war came up with a fresh modernism, often inspired by Scandinavian or American examples. Large modern complexes rose from the ground, not only in and around the big cities but also in rural areas. For instance, from 1954 onwards, the Nuclear Research Centre of Mol was established in the heart of the Campine region, a complex that included three nuclear reactors, several laboratories, offices and conference spaces, as well as some residential areas and schools. The entire project, designed by a team of Brussels architects that were led by Jacques Wybauw and were 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 could be recognized. As a provincial architect, Schellekens was presented with this project for approval, but it is hardly conceivable that he could have opposed the architecture of this national project of public utility, or that he would have dared to demand the buildings be dressed in a regional Campine style. Once this project was accepted, it naturally became less easy to oppose his younger Campine colleagues who submitted motivated and persistent modernist housing projects. What’s more, 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 streams, as legitimate and inevitable as the modern painting in which he had immersed himself with passion since 1946. What he could not 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 a streamlined modern design.
And, last but not least, the resurrection of modernism was impressively celebrated at Expo 58, an event that turned out to be a lavish exaltation of the contemporary era, of modern science and technology, and an optimistic affirmation of a new, secularized human image – all dressed in various forms of modern architecture whose exuberant visual language were met with great approval from the public. Expo 58 was a milestone in the modernization process of Belgium. It played a catalysing role in the transformation of the attitudes and tastes of the Belgian population. It was a significant factor in their emancipation from traditional forms and norms.
As a result, the conservative regionalism that Schellekens had posited until 1949 as the obvious, generally accepted view of life and architecture was completely overtaken by actual developments within 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. He was reportedly plagued by chronic headaches during that time. Under the pressure of the unstoppable and successful rise of modernism, he felt compelled to gradually adjust his views. Eventually, he resigned himself to the reality of the situation and reconnected with the modernism he had turned his back on 20 years earlier.
The latter is clearly evident in his most remarkable post-war project, the development of the Zilvermeer Provincial Domain in Mol (1956 – 1959), not far from the aforementioned atomic centre. He began by executing the general layout, profiling the existing sand-extraction lake with a semi-circular beach, constructed using the white sand of the region (1956 – 1957). Subsequently, he designed the beach building (1958 – 1959), an elongated curved structure that partly 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 back, it houses wooden changing cabins, 42 for men and 42 for women, while the rows of lockers simply stand under the concrete cross beams. At the front, the building overlooks the beach with a fully glazed façade and a continuous and spacious canopy. The flat roof is designed as a terrace with a cafeteria in the centre. 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 sunshade, balanced by an elegant ‘tail’. Schellekens had also equipped the roof terrace with rotatable wooden windbreaks. However, these had to be removed after two years as they raised objections from the local clergy who believed that they offered young couples too much privacy. This intervention could, of course, not detract from the clear, open character of the whole, which still exudes an atmosphere of freedom, spontaneity and relaxation. It was, and remains, an intact and clear structure in which no trace of regionalism or authoritarian monumentality can be detected anymore. Schellekens’ return to modernism was confirmed in his subsequent new construction projects, for example the schools in Geel (1960), Weelde (1960) and Wortel (1959 – 1963).
From 8 to 13 September 1961, the upper floor and entrance hall of Turnhout’s old town hall were transformed into a space for — among other things — an exhibition of the paintings of architect Jozef Schellekens. With wall draperies, spotlights and specially designed tube lamps, the town hall assumed a new appearance — a testament to the creative energy that characterised Turnhout in that period.
The series of photographs taken by José Heerman shows not only Jozef himself, but also his family, friends and colleagues. Together they form a unique snapshot of Turnhout modernism: a moment when art, architecture and community flowed seamlessly into one another.
Among the attendees were Mayor Richard Proost, priest-artist Remi Lens, and architect René Van Steenbergen — each a witness to a time in which architecture reached beyond mere technique: it was a way of life.
Jozef’s children and son-in-law were also present:
Paul Schellekens, then still an architecture student at the Academy in Antwerp, and architect Carli Vanhout, married to Mia Schellekens, Jozef’s eldest daughter. Together with Carli’s brothers Leo and André Vanhout, who were active in the family construction firm Frans Vanhout & Zn (now Vanhout.pro within the Van Roey Group), they continued to build a shared legacy of craftsmanship and vision.
The family ties extend even further than the professional ones.
When Jozef’s first wife passed away in 1942 during the birth of Lieve Schellekens — in the wartime years of the “blackout” — the newborn girl was lovingly cared for by René Van Steenbergen and his wife. Lieve would later marry architect Karel Beuten from Berchem — a touching testament to the human warmth and friendship within this community.
Today, these photographs are not only a precious family heirloom but also a visual document of Turnhout’s artistic vitality in the 1960s. They speak of a generation that believed in progress, beauty and connectedness — values that continue to live on in the houses, the archives and the work of their descendants.
Attendees:
Schellekens, introverted as he was, gave no explanation anywhere for his final about-turn from the radically traditional to the starkly late modern. 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 Campine cultural bearers the following without further explanation: “There is no Campine culture. The Campine was too poor for a long time to create culture, and what the Campine has produced in terms of painting, music, folk dance, folklore, etc., over the past 50 years or so can be called rather poor. Since our culture will become more and more international, we would do better not to speak of Campine culture anymore. What we should do, however, is to awaken a cultural unrest among our Campine people and create opportunities for young talents to develop their personalities.”
Perhaps this call to awaken cultural unrest (which was diametrically opposed to his conviction 20 years earlier that youth should be instilled with “the expressions of national architecture”) was not unrelated to the restless curiosity that his son Paul displayed during his architectural studies. For him and his fellow students, modernism was a matter of course. Together with them, he regularly undertook study trips during the 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 came into contact with Jaap Bakema, Aldo van Eyck and other members of Team 10. Afterwards, he made an extensive study trip throughout the USA where he closely familiarized himself with 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 tries to stand up, complains about a splitting headache, feels dizzy and eventually collapses onto a bed. During the transfer to the hospital in Mol, he repeatedly touches his head, indicating a searing headache. But on arrival he is already in a coma and barely responds to external stimuli.
The neurological diagnosis states that he has been struck by a massive cerebral haemorrhage. He remains alive for three more days until the moment that his son Paul, who was traveling, has been able to say goodbye to him.
Jozef dies on July 13, 1963, at the age of 54 and exactly one month to the day after his father, Ignaas Schellekens, had passed away.
He is buried in the family grave in Turnhout that he had designed when his first wife, Mietje, died.
15 mei 1909
Geboorte Jozef Schellekens
1914 – 1918
Wereldoorlog 1
1918 – 1930
Opleiding & stage
1930 – 1934
Wereldtentoonstelling ’30
1931 – 1933
KASK Antwerpen
1933
Prijs De Coster
1934 – 1936
Dubbelwoonst
1934 – 1936
HISK Antwerpen
1936
Het Glazen Kot
12 feb. 1935
Geboorte Mia Schellekens
27 jun. 1936
Geboorte Lydia Schellekens
1937
Provinciaal bouwmeester
6 juli 1939
Geboorte Paul Schellekens
1939 – 1945
Bouwkunst & Wederopbouw
1941
Boek ‘Architectuur in ons Landschap en het Stedebouwprobleem’
1942
Overlijden Mietje Vogels
18 okt. 1942
Geboorte Lieve Schellekens
1943
Directeur van de Stedelijke Academie van Turnhout
1943
Mia van den bosch
3 dec. 1944
Geboorte Cecilia Schellekens
1944
Heropbouw
1946
1947
Schaamte
1949
Boek ‘Turnhout, Hoofdstad van de Kempen
4 aug. 1949
Geboorte Peter Schellekens
1949
Kunst & Familie
1950
Ommekeer & Rivierenhof
1954
Heropleving van het Modernisme
1958
Expo ’58
1958 – 1963
1958 – 1963: provinciaal domein Zilvermeer mol
1962
Finale Ommezwaai
1963
Overlijden van Jozef Schellekens
May 15, 1909
Birth of Jozef Schellekens
1914 – 1918
World War I
1918 – 1930
Education & Internship
1930 – 1934
World Exhibition ’30
1931 – 1933
KASK Antwerp
1933
De Coster Prize
1934 – 1936
Double Residence
1934 – 1936
HISK Antwerp
1936
The Glass Shed
Feb. 12 1935
Birth of Mia Schellekens
Jun. 27 1936
Birth of Lydia Schellekens
1937
Provincial Architect
July 6, 1939
Birth of Paul Schellekens
1939 – 1945
Architecture & Reconstruction
1941
Book “Architecture in Our Landscape and the Urban Planning Problem”
1942
Death of Mietje Vogels
Oct. 18 1942
Birth of Lieve Schellekens
1943
Director of the Turnhout Municipal Academy
1943
Mia van den Bosch
Dec. 3 1944
Birth of Cecilia Schellekens
1944
Reconstruction
1946
1947
Shame
1949
Book ‘Turnhout, Capital of the Kempen’
Aug. 4 1949
Birth of Peter Schellekens
1949
Art & Family
1950
Turning Point & Rivierenhof
1954
Revival of Modernism
1958
Expo ’58
1958 – 1963
1958 – 1963: Provincial Domain Zilvermeer Mol
1962
Final Turnaround
1963
Death of Jozef Schellekens
