Jules Janco

Architect Jules Janco was born in 1886 in Bucharest, Romania. He resided in Zurich, Switzerland from 1914-1919, along with his brothers, where he attended the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (University of Zurich Federal Institute of Technology) for architecture. In the years around WWI, Zurich became the hub of great artists and thinkers from across Europe, and in 1916, the Janco brothers, alongside friends such as Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara and Emmy Hennings, helped to establish the Cabaret Voltaire, a weekly series of artistic, absurdist, and anarchic performances, and the birthplace of the Dada art movement.

Janco worked in France before returning to Bucharest in the early 1920s. Through the interwar years he maintained a successful architecture firm with his brother Marcel, and together they are credited with introducing modern architecture to Romania, designing many private residences and civic institutions such as the Strandul Kiseleff and the Bucegi Sanatorium. He worked in British Palestine and Israel for twelve years before emigrating to Canada with his wife Mizzi Packer and their son in the early 1950s. He lived and worked here in Montreal until his death in 1985.