3 Interesting Facts About Victor Horta During the Art Nouveau Period

Victor Horta

1 of 1Gustave Deltour

Horta Museum

Hôtel Solvay

Victor Horta was a Belgian architect and designer. John Julius Norwich described him as "undoubtedly the key European Art Nouveau architect." Horta is considered one of the virtually of import names in Art Nouveau architecture. With the structure of his Hôtel Tassel in Brussels in 1892-3, he is sometimes credited as the get-go to introduce the style to architecture from the decorative arts. Additionally, the French architect Hector Guimard was deeply influenced by Horta and further spread the "whiplash" style that Horta purported in France and abroad.

Born in Ghent, Horta was outset attracted to the architectural profession when he helped his uncle on a edifice site at the age of twelve.[citation needed]

When Horta's male parent died in 1880, he returned to Belgium and moved to Brussels, married his first wife, with whom he afterward fathered 2 daughters, and went to study architecture at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. In Brussels Horta built a friendship with Paul Hankar, who would after as well embrace Art Nouveau. Horta did well in his studies and was taken on as an assistant by his professor Alphonse Balat, architect to Leopold II of Belgium. Together they designed the royal Greenhouses of Laeken, Horta's starting time work to use glass and atomic number 26.

By 1885 Horta was working on his ain and was deputed to design three houses which were built that twelvemonth. The same year he besides joined the Cardinal Lodge of Belgian Architecture. Over the adjacent few years he entered a number of competitions for public work, and collaborated with sculptors (notably his friend Godefroid Devresse) on statuary and even tombs, winning a number of prizes. He focused on the curvature of his designs, believing that the forms he produced were highly practical and not creative affectations.

Fine art Nouveau period

Afterwards introducing Fine art Nouveau in an exhibition held in 1892, Horta was inspired. Deputed to design a home for professor Emile Tassel, he transfused the recent influences into Hôtel Tassel, completed in 1893. The blueprint had a groundbreaking semi open-program flooring layout for a business firm of the fourth dimension, and incorporated interior fe construction with curvilinear botanical forms, later on described as "biomorphic whiplash". Ornate and elaborate designs and natural lighting were curtained backside a rock façade to harmonize the building with the more rigid houses next door. The building has since been recognized every bit the offset appearance of Art Nouveau in compages.[iv]

After receiving great acclaim for his designs, Horta was commissioned to complete many other important buildings throughout Brussels. Enhancing this new architectural style, Horta designed the Hôtel Solvay (1895–1900) and his own residence (1898) employing atomic number 26 and stone façade with elaborate iron interiors.

During 1894, Horta was elected President of the Central Society of Belgian Architecture, although he resigned the following year following a dispute caused when he was awarded the commission for a kindergarten on rue Saint-Ghislain without a public contest.[1]

From 1895 to 1899 Horta designed the Maison du Peuple (House of the People), a major building for the progressive Belgian Workers' Party consisting of a large complex of offices, meeting rooms, cafe and a conference & concert hall seating over 2,000 people. Its demolition in 1965, in spite of an international protest past over 700 architects, has been described as one of the greatest architectural crimes of the twentieth century.

Others

In melody with the public mood, later on some 10 years designing in the Art Nouveau manner that he pioneered and for which his is best known, from the turn of the century Horta's designs gradually started to become simplified and less flamboyant, with more classical references. This can first be seen in his 1901 extension to his recently completed Hôtel van Eetvelde, in which he chose to specify a pair of marble columns.

The mail service-war austerity meant that Art Nouveau was no longer affordable or fashionable. From this bespeak on Horta, who had gradually been simplifying his style over the previous decade, no longer used organic forms, and instead based his designs on the geometrical. He connected to use rational flooring plans, and to apply the latest developments in building engineering science and edifice services applied science. The Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, a multi-purpose cultural centre designed in a formal style that was new at the time, but which foreshadows Fine art Deco besides as having cubist features, is a especially prominent example.[1]

Horta adult the design for the Palais over several years from 1919, with construction finally kickoff in 1923. Externally the edifice is clad in stone, notwithstanding it was largely built using reinforced physical. Following the way he had left steel exposed in his Art Nouveau buildings, Horta had originally intended to leave the concrete exposed internally. Unfortunately the surface was unsatisfactory and, to his regret, had to be covered.

Horta actually began working on his longest running project - the modernist Brussels-Key railway station - in 1910, although (despite having been deputed to set drawings in 1913) work didn't starting time until 27 years later on. Horta was even so working on the station when he died in 1947, and the building was completed to his plans by his colleagues led past Maxime Brunfaut. Information technology eventually opened on 4 October 1952

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