Hugh Maaskant (1907–1977) is best known as the architect who made the biggest mark on the post-war reconstruction of Rotterdam with such buildings as the Groothandelsgebouw, the Hilton Hotel and the Lijnbaan flats. Beginning his career in 1937 as the partner of Willem van Tijen, Maaskant embarked on his most prolific period after establishing an independent practice in 1955. He produced the lion’s share of his work in the 1950s and ’60s, the very period architectural critics generally regard as a time of crisis, when architects worldwide fell prey to confusion and lack of direction. The overriding factor in this criticism was the close link that had grown up since the war between architects originating with the modern movement and the economic-political leaders of that time. The upshot, according to the critics, was that the utopian quality that had originally informed the modern movement had ceded to an empty formalism. This critical stance on post-war modernism was also directed in part at Maaskant. The year 1971 marked the point in his career when the long-smouldering dissatisfaction with the abstract, large-scale, anonymous and ‘inhuman’ aspects of architecture erupted. This was part of a broader cultural about-turn in the Netherlands in which ’60s policy, which was largely directed at material growth, came under critical review. The openness and spatiality of modern architecture that for a decade had served as metaphors for the ‘open society’ fell from favour and came to be perceived as an emptiness that needed programming if existential needs for visual stimuli, security and the ‘human’ scale were to be met. The great scale that had invaded every terrain of social reality and had been accommodated by the architecture of practices like Groosman, Van den Broek & Bakema, Van Embden and Maaskant, was no longer read as an optimistic sign of growth and advancement. Indeed, their buildings were regarded as the degrading products of antisocial architects. Add to that the widespread discontent with the quality ...