Autrique house

The house Autrique with Brussels was conceived by Victor Horta in 1893 in the style Art nouveau. It is located at the 266 of the Chaussée of Haecht to Schaerbeek.

This building, which represents a crucial step in the evolution of largest the Belgian Architecte , has just been the subject of a restoration with many regards specimen, helping with better including/understanding the birth of the Art nouveau.

In its Memories , Horta evokes the joy which it felt when Eugene Autrique entrusted the construction of his house to him. The two men knew each other because of their membership of the maconnic cabin of the “Friends Philanthropists”. The program fixed by Autrique was simple: “no luxury, no extravagance: livable underground, honourable hall and staircase, living room and dining room agreeably plain, first stage with bath and toilet and second mansard-roofed stage for children and personnel”.

This building today ressuscity is for us a moving work: it is the first important realization of a young architect who put all his heart, constant at it by the benevolence of his customer and the desire to affirm an original temperament. Stylistiquement, the Autrique House concerns the eclecticism, but the use of industrial materials and the development of a decorative language based on the curve announce the Art nouveau. Him only, the play of the colors - thoroughly reconstituted starting from many surveys - makes it possible to carry a new glance on the work of the Horta young person.

Opened with the public ‚the Autrique House was the subject of an original scenographic installation conceived by François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters ‚the authors of the series of obscure cartoons “the Cités”. Much more than like a visit of museum, the discovery of the Autrique House is conceived like a true account, a quasi initiatory course, making it possible to cross several layers of space and time.

See too

François Schuiten

External bond

Site of the house Autrique (trilingual site)

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