Fonds 1475 - Jules Janco (Iuliu Iancu) Fonds

Jules Janco was born on October 11, 1896 in Bucharest, Romania to an upper-middle class family. Janco’s father, Hermann Zvi Iancu, was a textile merchant who founded an import company called Frații Iancu with his brother Emil. Hermann’s father, Ițic Iancu, built a magnificent house for his son’s family at Str. Gandului 22 in the city’s Jewish Quarter. It was in that very house that Hermann and Rachel (née Juster or Iuster) raised Jules along with his three siblings: Marcel (1895), George (1899), and Lucia (1900).

In his early years, Janco attended a German school; he then attended middle school at a Jewish lyceum, and high school at Lyceul Lazar. The family travelled frequently throughout Europe; mostly to Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands.

Around 1914, Marcel and Jules received their high school diplomas and, amidst the brewing war in Europe, left Romania for politically-neutral Zurich (to be joined there in 1918 by George). Marcel intended to study architecture while Jules chose to study engineering; but after Jules faced complications entering engineering school, he too opted for architecture and enrolled at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH) (University of Zurich Federal Institute of Technology).

During this period, Marcel and Jules moved in social circles with many "disciples of the Dada movement," including Tzara, who had also relocated to Zurich, Hans Arp (painter and sculptor), Sophie Tauber (painter), Richard Huelsenbeck (a poet), Hans Richter (a painter and writer), Rudolf von Laban (a choreographer and designer), and Mary Wigman (dancer). The friends would meet regularly at taverns around Zurich including the Meirei, where they would take turns sharing and performing their latest artistic or literary works in a room called Cabaret Voltaire, and for which Marcel and Jules would produce costumes and masks. The brothers became increasingly involved in the movement over the course of their education--arranging festivals and exhibitions, performing in the weekly concerts--while also keeping up with their studies.

In 1919, after graduating from ETH Zürich, Marcel and Jules left Switzerland for France. Jules hoped to find work in Paris, but was eventually offered an architectural position on a post-War reconstruction project in Croix de Bac. Marcel meanwhile found work in Bethune, and married a woman named Micheline.

After roughly three years in northern France, Jules returned to Romania, where Marcel had begun to work as an architect in the office of Iosif Rosintal, and George worked as a railway engineer. By that time, Janco’s parents had sold their family home and moved to a house on a large plot of land owned by Hermann. Jules and George, still young and newly launched in their careers, lived with their parents. Father and sons began to develop the land with a series of duplexes to host an influx of newly-arrived immigrants in Bucharest. Marcel and Jules began to help family members with their architectural needs, and their network of clients expanded steadily.

Initially, Janco designed mostly homes and residential complexes, but as his career progressed, and his expertise grew, he received commissions for larger and more complex projects - many of which he designed and developed with his brother in a firm called Biroul de Studii Moderne.

Marcel and Jules are credited with designing many of the first modernist buildings in Bucharest, the Prahova Valley (just north of Bucharest). The brothers' Bauhaus-inspired collaborations emphasized interior design and urban development, and are said to be inspired by functionalist conceptions popularized by Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. Janco’s notable projects include Ștrandul Kiseleff, or the Strand, a large sports and recreation complex in central Bucharest (1929); the Bucegi Sanatorium on the outskirts of Predeal, which he designed alongside Marcel, and numerous other projects in Romania, Palestine/Israel and Canada.

Janco married Braila-born Mizzi Packer in 1928, with whom he had one son Stefan Claudiu (Steve Dan), born in 1932. Janco, his wife and young son fled to Palestine in January 1941, and eventually immigrated to Montreal. Jules Janco passed away in Montreal on February 14, 1985.