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Granpré Molière, Marinus Jan
(b Oudenbosch, 13 Oct 1883; d Wassenaar, 13 Feb 1972). Dutch architect, urban planner, theorist and teacher. He received his training (1902–8) at the Technische Hogeschool, Delft. He is best known for his part in designing Vreewijk (1913–21), an urban extension of Rotterdam based on garden-city principles, and for his leading role in the Delft school (see DELFT SCHOOL (ii)). Although usually considered a traditionalist, there is little evidence of conservatism in either his writings or his designs. Granpré Molière was the first to investigate the possibility of urban renewal on the basis of garden-city principles on a large scale. The project at Vreewijk, which brought him international fame, was always intended as the urban expression of Ebenezer Howard’s essentially anti-urban ideology of the garden city and was intended from the first to be an extension of Rotterdam. In the first phase, based on the street plan (1913) by H. P. Berlage, Granpré Molière developed a housing typology based on the relationship between urbanism, architecture and planning. This resulted in the second phase of Vreewijk, the extension plan (1920) by Granpré Molière, Verhagen & Kok commissioned by the Eerste Rotterdamsche Tuindorp NV. A private initiative, it was nevertheless based on the belief that urbanism has not only to do with planning but also with expressing contemporary cultural and artistic ambitions, and that therefore it cannot be the result of a single person’s intentions nor those of isolated parts of society, be they the state or private initiatives. Close cooperation with local government also led to the design (unexecuted) in 1923, developed from an initial project of 1921, of an extension plan for the left bank of the River Maas at Rotterdam and the regional plan for IJsselmonde, which was the first Dutch regional plan.
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