He was born in Driebergen, Utrecht, a son of poet, critic, essayist and philosopher Pieter Nicolaas van Eyck or van Eijk and wife Nelly Estelle Benjamins, a woman of Sephardic origin born and raised in Suriname.

He graduated in 1942, after which he remained in Switzerland until the end of World War II, where he entered the circle of many other avant-garde artists around Carola Giedion-Welcker, wife of historian Sigfried Giedion.

A member of CIAM and then in 1954 a co-founder of "Team 10", Van Eyck lectured throughout Europe and northern America propounding the need to reject Functionalism and attacking the lack of originality in most post-war Modernism.

Van Eyck was as co-editor of the Dutch magazine Forum between 1959 and 1963, alongside Herman Hertzberger and Jaap Bakema.

This helped publicise the "Team 10" call for a return to humanism within architectural design.