Victor Horta Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Victor Horta (1861-1947) was a Belgian architect and one of the founders of Art Nouveau. In Brussels town houses such as the Hôtel Tassel, the Hôtel Solvay, the Hôtel van Eetvelde and his own house and studio, he used exposed iron, glass and flowing lines inspired by plants to create open, light-filled interiors of extraordinary unity. Four of these houses are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Ghent, Paris and Brussels

Horta was born in Ghent in 1861. He studied music and then architecture at the academy in Ghent, worked for a time in Paris and in 1881 moved to Brussels, where he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and worked for Alphonse Balat, architect to King Leopold II, on the Royal Greenhouses of Laeken.

The Hôtel Tassel

The Hôtel Tassel (1893), a town house for the professor Émile Tassel, is often called the first Art Nouveau building. Behind a restrained stone facade, Horta created an open stair hall with slender iron columns, mosaic floors and painted walls whose whiplash lines flow from structure to decoration.

Solvay, van Eetvelde and the Maison du Peuple

Horta’s practice flourished in the following years with the Hôtel Solvay (1898) and the Hôtel van Eetvelde (1898), with its glass-domed salon, as well as the Maison du Peuple (1899), a headquarters for the Belgian Workers’ Party with a curving iron and glass facade. Its demolition in 1965 caused an international outcry and became a turning point for heritage conservation.

The Horta House and later work

Horta built his own house and studio on the Rue Américaine in Saint-Gilles (1898-1901), now the Horta Museum. After the First World War, which he spent partly in the United States, he turned to a more classical style, designing the Centre for Fine Arts (Bozar) in Brussels (1928) and Brussels Central Station, completed after his death in 1947. He was made a baron in 1932.