His family moved to the United Kingdom in 1919 and he was educated at Sidcot School, Somerset, from 1932 to 1935, after which he finished his secondary school in The Hague between 1935 and 1938, and went to study at the ETH Zurich. 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.
He taught at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture from 1954 to 1959 and he was a professor at the Delft University of Technology from 1966 to 1984. He also was editor of the architecture magazine Forum from 1959 to 1963 and in 1967.