Blanche Lemco van Ginkel (1923), a pioneering Canadian woman architect and urban planner, contributed to the most important planning projects in Montreal during the 1960s. She worked in collaboration with H. P. Daniel van Ginkel, and together their planning proposals determined the direction of the future growth of Montreal. At a time of rapid clearance and construction in the city core, and when the Old City was at risk of total demolition, the van Ginkels were committed to the development of a humane architectural environment. The van Ginkels understood Modernism as a movement concerned with ethical, social and technical improvements within society, not merely as a style for building and major redevelopment. / In this thesis, I argue that Lemco van Ginkel developed a unique Modern urban aesthetic that is reflected in her planning work in Montreal. She viewed the urban environment as a total fabric in which the disruption of one thread affected the whole. Any changes made must be done with due respect for the totality ensuring an end product that is a whole cloth, not a patchwork. The development of her urban aesthetic can be properly understood only against the following backdrop: her experience in Europe, working in the Atelier of Le Corbusier, and attending CIAM in association with Team Ten; and, in the United States while teaching in the 1950s at the University of Pennsylvania where she initiated an American chapter of CIAM (Group for Architectural Investigation). Moreover, her design theory must be viewed in light of her collaboration with her husband, H. P. Daniel van Ginkel (1920), a member of the Dutch CIAM and a founding member of Team Ten during the 1950s. Lemco van Ginkel's conception of a Modern urban aesthetic allowed her to assume an essential role in the fundamental design of Montreal.

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