As a member of the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne he drafted the Doorn Manifesto of the Team 10 architects.
He married a British-born Canadian architect, Blanche Lemco, who he had met at the CIAM congress in Aix-en-Provence in 1953,[2] and at the age of 37 moved with her to Montreal, where he established the design and management firm van Ginkel Associates.
He subsequently played a major role in saving Old Montreal from destruction in the early 1960s.
As assistant director of the city of Montreal's newly formed planning department, he persuaded authorities to abandon plans for an expressway that would have cut through the old city.
[3] In 2007, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada in recognition for having "brought a greater appreciation of the impact of infrastructure on the character of urban development".