Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, recognized for having saved Old Montreal threatened by a highway project, passed away at the age of 98 on October 20.
Posted at 9:59
Updated at 8:43 p.m.
A founding member of the Ordre des urbanistes du Québec, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel died on October 20 in Toronto, where she had resided for years.
Born in London, she left her mark on the Quebec metropolis, in particular by helping to save Old Montreal, threatened by a project in the 1960s that proposed a highway that was to cross the heritage district. In addition, she took part in the planning of Expo 67.
According to Dinu Bumbaru, director of policy at Heritage Montreal, its refusal to endorse the original development plan for the highway “avoided a lot of damage”. “Imagine the Bonsecours Market with the Métropolitain glued to it,” he adds. It would have been an irreparable disaster. »
Blanche Lemco van Ginkel has paved the way for several professionals who have enabled new generations of urban planners to “think the city differently”, to favor the “safeguarding of districts” and to stimulate “the quality of life”, underlines Mikael St- Pierre, professor in the Department of Urban and Tourism Studies at the University of Quebec in Montreal and coordinator at the Center for Urban Ecology in Montreal.
“Its architecture and urban planning are marked by a deep social purpose and a desire to produce comfortable modern environments, emphasizing collective cultural values,” Annmarie Adams and Tanya Southcott of McGill University wrote in Pioneering Woman of American Architecture.
“She’s a great Montrealer, but also a Montreal pioneer in urban planning and architecture,” says Mikael St-Pierre. Van Ginkel’s work helped shift the planning paradigm from modern to postmodern urbanism. »
For more than 30 years, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel has had a career as a teacher in North America, notably at the Université de Montréal, McGill University and the University of Toronto. “She was not just an enlightened fighter, but she participated in the creation of urban planning education in Quebec,” adds Dinu Bumbaru.
Blanche Lemco van Ginkel studied architecture and urban planning at Harvard University and McGill University. She worked with prominent architects, including Le Corbusier, in the 1950s in Paris. “She was a rare female architect and urban planner of her time,” recalls Dinu Bumbaru.
Winner of numerous awards, she is notably the recipient of the gold medal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada in 2020. The Ordre des urbanistes du Québec has also created the Blanche Lemco van Ginkel prize in her honor, awarded to a person who “deserves to be known”.
At his request, no funeral ceremony will take place. Blanche Lemco van Ginkel is survived by her children and her grandson.
With The Canadian Press