By Caroline Voet & Hans W. van der Laan

Today, Dom Hans van der Laan (1904–91) is something of a cult figure of European post-World War II architecture. The Dutch Benedictine monk and architect dedicated his life to the search for fundamental principles of architecture, and his thoughts on numerical relationships and dimensional systems were highly influential in mid-twentieth-century architectural theory. A House to Live With: 16 Variations by Dom Hans van der Laan and His Companions is the first book to comprehensively explore the residential buildings designed by Van der Laan and some of his students in the Ecclesiastical Architecture course in in s-Hertogenbosch, which he directed 1946–1973. 16 of them, built 1966–1985, are featured in full detail through photographs and plans newly produced for this book, and analysed with regard to their compositional and design principles. Essays examine the mathematical relationships of numbers and volumes that are fundamental to van der Laan’s designs, alongside discussion of how he was influenced by ancient Roman architecture.