Jerry VAN EYCK

!melk’s founding principal Jerry van Eyck possesses an unusual breadth and depth of skills that he applies to every project under his purview. Trained as a landscape architect and industrial designer, he approaches each commission balancing both the macro-scale – how open and public space fit into the larger context of a city’s fabric and the urban experience, with the micro – materiality, ornamentation, and pattern as expressed through custom furniture, lighting, paving, and other details that provide each project its own singular identity.

Before moving to New York in 2008, Jerry practiced in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, from where – for over a decade – he was responsible for design of many internationally renowned and award-winning projects.
Today, many of these projects still remain relevant within the profession, and are quite often regarded as exemplary precedents within the discourse of landscape architecture and urban design.

Jerry leads !melk with the ethos/philosophy that always focuses on the design – what works best, and what creates the most optimal outcome for the project. As Principal and Founder of !melk, he believes in embracing unrestrained creativity and thinking holistically about every project – what is the best outcome for the project in its entirety, economically, socially, environmentally, culturally? What does it mean for the city, or the adjacent context? What impact does design have on the identity of a place? What do people experience, and do they embrace the places we design for them?

With !melk, Jerry has developed a portfolio of built/unbuilt work all across the world, ranging from private gardens, to the outdoor spaces of museums, to private estates, to parks, to waterfronts, to urban master plans, including residential projects, commercial projects, institutional projects, to bespoke architectural structures, to large pieces of social infrastructure. For each project, together with the !melk team, Jerry always aims to design something original, instilling a drive to create something that hasn’t been done or seen before. !melk‘s designs seek to exude an inherent positive spirit, focusing on the element of allure and surprise, to really create places that make sense and are of-the-place.