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La Croix, Guillaume-Frédéric
(b Amsterdam, 1877; d Amsterdam, July 1923). Dutch architect. He worked in various architectural offices, including that of Eduard Cuypers where he met Michel de Klerk. La Croix can be regarded as an early exponent of the AMSTERDAM SCHOOL style. He built little, but his polyglot artistic designs made a considerable impression on his contemporaries. His first executed work was a tomb (1911). In 191617 he designed a double villa in Meerwijk Park, Bergen, where many Amsterdam school architects were working, which shows some Asian influences. These are stronger in the Rederij Koppe shipping office (1919) at De Ruyterkade Steiger 7, Amsterdam; the design of this structure, entirely in timber on concrete foundations, was based on the architectural tradition of Java. His residential block (1918) on the corner of Bellamystraat and Justus van Effenstraat, Amsterdam, for the Rochdale housing association is more rationalist, with the pronounced corner treatment and decorative use of roof tiles characteristic of the Amsterdam school. He built two other residential blocks for the Rochdale housing association in the 1920s. Another design (1920) for the shop of the art dealer Fetter, on the corner of the Weteringschans and Spiegelgracht, Amsterdam, is also in the style of the Amsterdam school. It is composed of brick and timber, with the latter richly fashioned in an almost moulded expressiveness.
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