Frits van Dongen completed his studies in Architecture at the Delft University of Technology in 1980. From then on he worked on a series of stirring experimental design studies and publications with Kas Oosterhuis.

For his first commission, the Natal residential complex in Rotterdam, he established his own bureau in 1985: Van Dongen Architekten in Delft. In 1988, along with Carel Weeber, Pi de Bruijn and Jan Dirk Peereboom Voller, he was a co-founder of de Architekten Cie., in which he has been a partner ever since.

Large-scale complexes, such as ‘De Landtong’ at Kop van Zuid in Rotterdam’s former harbour area and ‘The Whale’, an iconic residential complex in Amsterdam’s former harbour district are exemplary for his impressive oeuvre of housing complexes. Other examples of his work include the Cap Gemini headquarters in Utrecht and the mixed-use Spazio development in Zoetermeer. As an urban planner and supervisor, Frits van Dongen was involved with developing IJburg, an urban expansion in Amsterdam, the urban regeneration Hart van Zuid in Hengelo, and an urban expansion of Bolzano, Italy. The diversity and high quality of this work, as well as his designs for De Harmonie Leeuwarden, multiplex cinema Pathé ArenA and Heineken Music Hall, Amsterdam and Philharmonie, Haarlem earned him the oeuvre award, the Kubus of the Royal Institute of Dutch Architects (BNA) in 2006.

Frits van Dongen was a guest professor at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona and gives lectures at universities and academies of architecture throughout the world.