François Dens

François Dens, born Franciscus Ludovicus Dens in Antwerp on 1 July 1880 and died in Wilrijk on 11 November 1968, was an Antwerp architect active from about 1905 to the early 1950s. He built a successful career serving the bourgeoisie and the business world; between the wars he concentrated above all on large high-end apartment buildings, while also designing many town houses and villas whose style evolved from Beaux-Arts to Art Deco and then to a functional modernism. For the Gerex company he built the Majestic apartment building and cinema on Carnotstraat (1923-1924), then the Berchem Palace, an apartment building with cinema on Grotesteenweg (designed in 1928). The corpus also includes the Bogaert building on the Meir (1925), the Broeckx building on the corner of Jan Van Rijswijcklaan and Karel Oomsstraat (1928), the Rosenfeld-Figatner building (1931) and the ICA building on Van Eycklei (1931), one of the high-rise blocks put up around the Stadspark at the end of the interwar period. He also designed the town houses at Jan Van Rijswijcklaan 41 (1928) and 143 (1933), and a small rental building at Transvaalstraat 10 in Berchem (around 1926).

Translated from the French original.