Having trained at Delft Polytechnic, Felix Claus (1956) and Kees Kaan (1961) joined together in 1987. They have 35 employees in their office in Amsterdam and the two partners share the same teaching background; at the Berlage Institute and the Amsterdam Academy. Their attitude to the changes in their profession is very clear, “the architect can only be successful if he renounces his traditional position of authority... if he accepts the realities of the context on which he depends in order to build.” The team continues the modern tradition of projecting form starting from function. Other distinctive features of the practice are its extreme urban courtesy, while its use of rigorous geometry and materials with expressive qualities approaches it to more contemporary sensibilities. The trajectory of the firm, summarised by the Utrecht civic centre, the Haarlemmerburt houses in Amsterdam, the industrial centre of the same city (see Arquitectura Viva 48) or the Groningen housing (see Arquitectura Viva 54), has been recently extended by three housing projects...[+]