6 rue Paul-Émile Janson, Brussels
1893, Victor Horta

"...This house is a date, a grand date, in the history of architecture: the first manifestation of a movement victorious today, the first modernist work, chronologically speaking. All the originality in Victor Horta's talent is to be found in this dwelling: in the plan, in the façade, in the choice and blend of materials of which it is built. This building must be watched over like a relic: one day it will become a place of pilgrimage, consulted as a means of comprehending all that has emanated from it, as a means of discovering everything powerful, magnificent and practical which it heralded."

Sander Pierron in Savoir et Beauté, July 1924

In order to understand how the building of a house such as Hôtel Tassel came about in Brussels in 1893 it is necessary to understand the restlessness felt by a large number of people at the time. Despite receiving it independence in 1830, Belgium was still under the shadow of its neighbours, the Netherlands, and more especially, France. As French was the main language of the Belgian upper class, cultural, social and political fashions largely followed that of France. Thus, like most of the European continent, Belgium architecture had for sometime relied on history for its inspiration and had little to do with the spirit of the society of the day. Artistic taste was unwilling to accept or even acknowledge the technological advances of the time; in fact historicism could be seen as a reflex defence against these developments. It was time for a new art that would embrace technology and reflect a change in the social ideals of the country.

The new bourgeoisie were angered by the way the lower class workers were being treated, and especially by the way the political demonstrations were being handle by the Catholic government. Following riots in Charleroi in 1886 which were brutally suppressed by the army, many of the country's young intellectual middle class were moved to leave their social circles and to join the Parti Ouvrier Belge (Belgian Workers Party) including, most notably a group of lawyers lead by Max Hallet.

The new socialists, who were mostly lawyers, engineers and former colonists, were eager to express their modernity and how open they were to new ideas and soon became the leading patrons of Brussels' Art Nouveau. However, it would be wrong to suggest that Art Nouveau and specifically the work of Victor Horta were a direct result of new social ideals, but all parties involved did share a strong desire for change and progress at all costs.

In 1891, with the help of Tassel, Autrique, Charbou and Hubert, Victor Horta became an assistant at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Brussels Free University) and, in 1892, on the death of Ernest Hendryckx he became a professor like Tassel and Autrique. He had met the pair at the Loge des Amis Philanthropes which he had joined in 1887. The society was the meeting place for the city's most important intellectual and artistic personalities, and it was here that he met most of his and patrons as well as many of the artists he used in his subsequent projects.

Victor Horta was born in 1861. At the age of 12 he began studying music at the conservatory in his home town of Ghent. Three years later he moved to the Academy where he began his architectural studies. After two years of working in Paris he returned to Belgium in 1880 when he resumed his training at the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. In 1884 he began working as a draughtsman for Alphonse Balat (1818-1845) who was the favourite architect of King Léopold II. During his time with Balat he learned the principles of classicism which are clearly visible in his first commissions.

In 1893, the year of his appointment as professor at the university, Horta received his most important commissions of his career to date. His two friends, Autrique and Tassel, both asked Horta to design houses for them in Brussels. The Hôtel Autrique, at 226 Chausée de Haecht achieved a formal simplicity and great dignity despite a tight budget and a "banal" [1] brief. A strong gothic influence can be seen in the doorway, but it is not until the loggia on the second floor that Horta began to experiment with his stylised, floral decoration, on what is otherwise a voluntarily plain façade.

When Émile Tassel asked Horta to build him a house, he gave him a free hand that "would allow him to realise the dream which haunted him, that of achieving the effect of monumentality in private housing."[2]

In his Mémoires Horta states that "It was a time when, synthesising my thoughts, I proclaimed that the house should not only be built in the image of the occupant but it should also be his portrait." [3] This constituted a major break with tradition. Until then, the plans of bourgeois family houses in Brussels were practically identical for each building making no concessions to the needs of its occupants (see diagram).[4]

Tassel, an engineer and professor of descriptive geometry, was a well known bachelor and free-mason who was devoted to his grand-mother who lived in the house with him. A keen traveller and photographer, he gave regular dinner parties at his home to a small circle of friends. In 1892 he bought an empty lot at 12, rue Turin in the fast growing suburbs that had appeared following the creation of the highly fashionable Avenue Louise in 1864. As was the case everywhere in Brussels at that time, the site was deep and narrow, only 7.8 metres wide.[5]

The house has three main floors plus an attic and service basement. It's plan, which is divided into four bays, can be considered as two separate buildings joined by a highly lit circulation space.

The two bays at the rear of the house follow a more or less traditional Brussels house plan, with two major room and a staircase to the side (along with bathroom and WCs). This part of the house contains the most public rooms of the house on the ground and first floors, as well as the bedrooms on the second floor.

The front bay consists of those rooms solely with M. Tassel in mind. On the second floor is his laboratory which can only be reached via a long narrow corridor from the rear of the house. On the first floor is his office which, like the laboratory, stretches the entire width of the house. Below these, on a mezzanine level is the smoking room flanked by a cloakroom and photographic dark room.

It is the second bay, that joins the two parts together, that attracts the most interest. Forming the heart of the house, the two light wells create an oasis where, typically, one would least expect to find one. It is through this bay that all the main circulation routes pass, and it is from here that the house becomes legible as a whole.

The façade is dominated by the bay window 3.6m wide, containing the smoking room and Tassel's office, which appears to be bursting through the building's skin above the monumental doorway. [6] Most striking is its symmetry, unheard of at the time for such a small plot. It is here that Horta's sound knowledge of classical architecture becomes apparent. The division of the façade into three with an empty central bay with a full one either side recalls Venetian loggias and Roman triumphal arches.

It is possible to see in the façade a clear expression of Horta's mastery in the handling of materials. The change in opacity, from the closed, shaded doorway to the open, light laboratory window is reflected in the change of materials, from stone to iron and glass, and it is the resultant dialogue that marks the departure from fashions of the period. The steel bressumers were not hidden as would have normally been the case, but were, in fact, highlighted especially at the junction with the Ashlar work. This is most visible around the bay window of the smoking room, where the diminutive stone columns appear to be gripping hold of the lintel above.

On entering, the visitor would find themselves in a small vestibule faced with a set of four doors. Those directly ahead were usually locked, so depending on who you were you would either go through the doors to the left of right. Guests and close friends would enter the house via the left and the cloakroom, while delivery men and Horta's students would enter to the right into the parlour which gave direct access to the stairs to the basement. Natural light would only reach the vestibule, not from the street as would have been expected, but from the centre of the house through the stained glass panels of the double doors.

Leaving these closed, dark rooms for the openness of the rooms beyond would have been quite a shock for the uninitiated visitor.

Crossing the second, octagonal vestibule, the second bay of the house is reached by a flight of seven steps. The green marble and wood of the first vestibule has changed to white marble, steel and glass. It is while making this transition that the house opens up to the visitor. From the safety of the octagon it is possible to see to the garden through the salon and dining room, and obliquely, the strange organic, cast iron columns on the edges of the winter garden and stair well. Above the landing is a double curved vault which is edged on three sides by curving, steel, composite beams reminiscent of the bressumers on the façade, which join at the corners above the 'budding', cast iron columns.

The winter garden, to the left, has a glazed roof which follows the gentle curve of the steel beam at its side. The party wall is mirrored above eye-level giving the space an extra sense of openness. The exotic plants and bamboo furniture, that originally filled the room, would have given it a mysterious and almost oriental feel, made all the more intriguing by its position in the centre of the house.[7]

Opposite the winter garden is the light well and stair case leading to the first floor and mezzanine. The main wall is covered in a mural that echoes the penetration of light from above in its graduation of orange tones, while a seething mass of tentacle-like plants struggle to reach this light.

It is these three spaces that form the heart of the house and it is to here that all other spaces refer. Here, for the first time, Horta achieves a harmony in his design that would become his trade mark and rallying call of his contemporaries such as Henri van der Velde as it had been for the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain. [8] This harmony id achieved by Horta's incredible attention to detail; every part of the house was meticulously designed, and closely supervised during construction. Every junction was carefully considered which allowed Horta to create a new language that took its influences from areas that had, until then, been thought of as incompatible - nature and technology for example. The interaction of materials, like that of a "living organism", [9] is most clearly visible where steel beams sit in the stone walls causing them to 'bulge' slightly under the weight.

It is interesting to compare the metal work of the balustrade on the stairs to the work of Thonet in his bent-wood furniture, which had been popular since the 1850's. Here, as in Thonet's chairs, the characteristic curves are of a technical origin, not a figurative one. The dynamic balustrade, like the wall mural, and mosaic on the floor, seem to push towards the light above in a never-ending movement.

Following these sweeping curves, the male visitors at a dinner-party would retreat to the smoking room on the mezzanine level. Despite the secluded nature of this room it was still possible to communicate with the women below via the balcony that looked down, over the salon and dining room.

The room itself is dominated by the seat in the bay window and the stained glass reminiscent of cigarette smoke that create strange shadows and cast luminescent pools of light onto the walls and floor. It is from here that Tassel would project his photographs onto a screen in the dining room for his guests. Horta provided a stand for the projector which is built into the balustrade of the balcony.

Above the door to the mezzanine is a statue of Perseus by a close friend of Horta, Godefried de Vreese. As is the case on the next landing, the elevation of the door, steel lintel and niche make a clear reference to the external façade, which is further emphasised by the paint work of alternating horizontal stripes. ( The Ashlar work is of alternating courses of 'blue' and 'white' stone).

At the top of the stairs is another landing, from which Tassels office can be reached up a short flight of steps directly above those on the ground floor. From this landing the visitors of the grand-mother would have reached her private day rooms at the rear of the house. These were decorated in a much more conventional manner, like the salon and dinning room below. These two rooms were decorated in Liberty and other floral wallpapers supplied by van der Velde. This again shows the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement.

Of particular interest in these rooms are the complex cast iron columns which not only supported the glazing and door panels, but also controlled the changes in geometry from one room to the another and acted as hot air ducts.

The whole of the ground floor is heated by hot air from a coal-fired-furnace in the basement. Fresh-air was brought in from the garden, then, once heated, was ducted to the salon, dining room, light wells and vestibule. Here it entered the room through a bronze grill in the floor at the centre of a mosaic of flame-like tendrils. The flue gas is ducted through the chamfered corner of the stairwell, while flue pipes for the gas and coal appliances upstairs are situated next to ventilation flues in order to make use of the stack effect.

After Tassel left the building it was turned into a lodging house during which time much of the paint work was repainted green in order to deter the visitors who came to see the house. In 1976 it was bought by Jean Delhaye, who had worked for Horta before the second world war, and was restored to its original condition. The famous murals had to be repainted, woodwork replaced and the stained glass windows of the smoking room remade.

Following the Hôtel Tassel Horta's career went from strength to strength reaching its apogee in the Hôtel Solvay (1895-1900) which was a development of many of the areas here started to develop here, and in the Maison du Peuple (1896-1909) for the Parti Ouvrier Belge which was demolished in 1965. Here, especially in the forceful structural steel of the auditorium, Horta came closest to fulfilling the ideals that Viollet-le-Duc had set out in his Entretiens sur l'Architecture of 1863 and 1872.

The influence that Hôtel Tassel has had on the architecture of Belgium and of Europe as a whole has been enormous. Immediately on its completion it filled the architectural and artistic periodicals and was heralded as the only true architecture of the time, so much so that it helped shape the ever growing suburbs around it. Along with the designs of Paul Hankar and Henri van der Velde, the Hôtel Tassel became the building to which all fashionable architects of the time referred, with a varying degree of success. In the work of Hector Guimard in Paris a clear progression can be seen. He travelled extensively in Britain and Belgium in 1895 and a strong influence can be seen in his subsequent work, including the final detailing of Caste Beranger that had been started in 1894, and the Metro stations of 1900. However most architects merely borrowed motifs from Horta's design without fully understanding how he came up with such a revolutionary synthesis of art, technology and nature.

Art Nouveau - Alastair Duncan, 1994, Thames and Hudson
Pioneers of Modern Design - Noholas Pevsner, 1975 edition, Penguin
Bruxelles: Art Nouveau - 1993, AAM
Art Nouveau Architecture - Frank Russell editor, 1979 Academy Editions
Art Nouveau en Belgique - Francoise Dierkens-Auby editor, 1991, Editions Pucolot
Victor Horta - Franco Borsi & Paolo Portoghesi, 1970 Edizioni del Tritone
The Story of Art - EH Gombrich, 1989 15th edition, Phaidon Press
In theNouveau Style - Malcolm Haslem, 1989, Thames and Hudson
Timeless Architecture Vol.1 - Dan Cruickshank editor, 1985 Architectural Press
Victor Horta: Hôtel Tassel 1893-1895 - Francois Loyer & Jean Delhaye, 1986, AAM
Art Nouveau - Lara-Vini Masini, 1986, Thames and Hudson
Art Nouveau - Klaus Jürgen Sembach, 1991, Taschen

Matt Watts
Copyright free, but credit appreciated.

Written Spring, 1995 as part of my BSc. (Hons) in Architecture at the University of Bath under Vaughan Hart