44 Facts About Victor Horta

Victor Pierre Horta was a Belgian architect and designer, and one of the founders of the Art Nouveau movement.

Victor Horta was a fervent admirer of the French architectural theorist Eugene Viollet-le-Duc and his Hotel Tassel in Brussels, often considered the first Art Nouveau house, is based on the work of Viollet-le-Duc.

The curving stylized vegetal forms that Horta used in turn influenced many others, including the French architect Hector Guimard, who used it in the first Art Nouveau apartment building he designed in Paris and in the entrances he designed for the Paris Metro.

Victor Horta is considered a precursor of modern architecture for his open floor plans and his innovative use of iron, steel and glass.

Victor Horta made a highly original use of steel frames and skylights to bring light into the structures, open floor plans, and finely-designed decorative details.

Victor Horta was born in Ghent, Belgium, on 6 January 1861.

Victor Horta's father was a master shoemaker, who, as Horta recalled, considered craftsmanship a high form of art.

The young Victor Horta began by studying music at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent.

Victor Horta was expelled for misbehavior and went instead to study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent.

Victor Horta's father died in 1880, and Victor Horta returned to Belgium.

Victor Horta moved to Brussels and married his first wife, with whom he later fathered two daughters.

Victor Horta began to study architecture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels.

Victor Horta became friends with Paul Hankar, another early pioneer of Art Nouveau architecture.

Victor Horta did well in his studies and was taken on as an assistant by his professor Alphonse Balat, the architect to King Leopold II.

Victor Horta worked with Balat on the construction of the Royal Greenhouses of Laeken in northern Brussels, Victor Horta's first work to utilise glass and iron.

In 1884, Victor Horta won the first Prix Godecharle to be awarded for architecture for a proposed new building for the Belgian Parliament.

In 1893, Victor Horta built a town house, the Autrique House for his friend Eugene Autrique.

The major breakthrough for Victor Horta came in 1892, when he was commissioned to design a home for the scientist and professor Emile Tassel.

Victor Horta used the technologies of glass and iron, which he had practiced on the Royal Greenhouses of Laeken, to create an interior filled with light and space.

Victor Horta had a virtually unlimited budget, and used the most exotic materials in unusual combinations, such as marble, bronze and rare tropical woods in the stairway decoration.

Victor Horta designed every detail including the bronze doorbell and the house number, to match the overall style.

The Hotel van Eetvelde is considered one of Victor Horta's most accomplished and innovative buildings, because of highly original Winter Garden interior and the imaginative details throughout.

Victor Horta made unusual combinations of materials, such as wood, iron and marble in the staircase decoration.

Victor Horta achieved this by use of large windows, skylights, mirrors, and especially by his open floor plans, which brought in light from all sides and from above.

The Victor Horta Museum, composed of Victor Horta's residence and workshop side-by-side.

The owner originally wished to keep his original family furniture, but because of the odd shape of the rooms, Victor Horta was commissioned to create new furniture.

In 1907, Victor Horta designed the Museum for Fine Arts in Tournai, although it did not open until 1928 due to the war.

Jean Delhaye, a former aid of Victor Horta, saved the building from demolition, and by 16 October 1975, because of its connection to Victor Horta, it was declared a protected historical site.

In 1906, Horta accepted the commission for the new Brugmann University Hospital.

In February 1915, as World War I was underway and Belgium was occupied, Victor Horta moved to London and attended the Town Planning Conference on the Reconstruction of Belgium, organised by the International Garden Cities and Town Planning Association.

From this point on, Victor 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.

Victor Horta continued to use rational floor plans, and to apply the latest developments in building technology and building services engineering.

Victor Horta developed the plans for the Centre for Fine Arts beginning in 1919, with construction starting in 1923.

Victor Horta had intended the concrete to be left exposed in the interior, but the final appearance did not meet his expectations, and he had it covered.

In 1927, Victor Horta became the Director of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, a post he held for four years until 1931.

In recognition of his work, Victor Horta was awarded the title of Baron by King Albert I in 1932.

In 1910, Victor Horta began working on drawings on his most ambitious and longest running project: Brussels Central Station.

Victor Horta was formally commissioned as the architect in 1913, but work did not actually begin until after World War II, in 1952.

Victor Horta was still working on the station when he died in 1947.

Victor Horta typically designed not only the building, but the furniture, to match his particular style.

Victor Horta's furniture became as well known as his houses; a displays of his furniture were shown at the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris, and the 1902 Turin Exposition of Modern Decorative Arts.

Victor Horta married his second wife, Julia Carlsson, in 1908.

Victor Horta died on 8 September 1947 and was interred in Ixelles Cemetery in Brussels.

However, several of Victor Horta's buildings are still standing in Brussels up to this day and some are available to tour.