Monsieur Etrimo, the story of a genius and his downfall (Part 1)

Part 1: Collin, a courageous Entrepreneur.

Jean Florian Collin is a Brussels architect and promoter born in 1904, a stone’s throw from the Manneken Pis, son of a modest servant and an unknown father.

Despite everything, he graduated architect from the Antwerp Engineering School.

In the 1930s, he began his career with the construction, in Brussels, of the first luxury apartment buildings, intended for the upper middle class.

In the interwar period, the large houses with domestic service were gradually abandoned and replaced by large, brighter and fully equipped city-apartments.

Collin was the prolific architect of some of the finest Art Deco and Modernist buildings of the period.

He then created his company “Etrimo” (Etudes et Réalisations Immobilières), worked with other modernist architects including Stanislas Jazinski, in particular to build the very futuristic “Tonneau“on the Ixelles ponds.

He is also the author of two Art Deco buildings at the Rond-point de l’Etoile, Residence Ernestine and Le Palais du Congo.

He built no less than 15 large apartment buildings between 1930 and 1948, with a forced stop from 40 to 45. During this period, he joined the French resistance…

To be continued later…