Jan Ernst van der Pek practised at a period when the terms of architecture itself were under argument.
The record lists Jan Ernst van der Pek as Dutch architect (1865-1919).
Jan Ernst van der Pek was born at Amsterdam in 1865. His recorded nationality is Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Industrialisation gave architecture iron, glass and the lift, and with them the problems of the railway station, the factory and the tall city block.
He is recorded as architect and amateur painter.
Buildings outlast their architects and usually their purposes, which is what makes the discipline unforgiving.
That the work was built in Kingdom of the Netherlands shaped it: climate, materials, planning law and who holds the budget all decide what can actually be built.
Jan Ernst van der Pek died in 1919, aged 54. The buildings remain, still in use by people who never knew the name - which is the particular afterlife architecture offers.
