Gustave Strauven

Gustave Strauven is a Belgian architect born with Schaerbeek (Brussels) in 1878 and deceased in 1919. His/her father, Pierre Arnold Strauven, were gardener and originating in Limbourg.

At the eighteen years age, it enters to the office of Victor Horta with which it finishes the Hôtel van Eetvelde and the house of the People. It leaves it later two years to work one year as draftsman in a cabinet of architect with Zurich. It returns then to Brussels and in spite of its young age draws its first houses. It is an architect Art nouveau second generation.

Credit and creative, Gustave Strauven is strongly implied in the search for new technologies. It records many patents of all kinds, energy of the techniques of construction to the improvement of the heating with vapor and the vehicles with only one wheel. He also collaborates in the review the Sheaf , a magazine of decoration and architecture art nouveau .

One owes him about thirty constructions of style Art nouveau in which the architect pushes very far the use of floral reasons in the ironwork. Its customers being less fortunate than that of Victor Horta, it give up using the stone as principal material but compensate by the expressivity of the forms and the variety of materials. Developing an exuberant language, it uses polychrome masonry, the reasons for stone to modelled plastic, the elements in ironwork with the whimsical forms.

Mobilized at the time of the First World War, it will die of the continuations of its wounds in March 1919 in a hospital of Haute-Savoie (France). It did not have whereas forty years. All its work was carried out in less than twenty years.

Saint-Cyr military school house

Its most famous work is the house Saint-Cyr military school , built between 1901 and 1903 in a style baroque and blazing to be used as private mansion to the painter Georges of Saint-Cyr military school .

Major, impressive work and all in height being hardly 4 meters broad, the frontage of this house is rich finely worked ironwork which form a whole of lines of curves and geometrical figures. Each balcony has a balustrade with different reasons. Ironwork of art which encloses the small garden made think of a vegetable entrelac, Strauven made there display of its virtuosity and its imagination. The decorative pieces of the windows, which themselves occupy the most possible surface, like those of the carved white stones, answer the drawings of the wrought iron.

The loggia of the fourth stage is undoubtedly the most strange element of the frontage, a metal beam folded in arc of circle supports the structure of it.

This work considered to be excessive and extravagant at the time is scorned by the detractors of the Art nouveau because of its aspect considered to be exaggeratedly decorative, it was described as Art nouveau baroque .

Although it constitutes one of the florets of architecture in Brussels, it was classified only in 1988 and is strongly degraded. Negotiations are in hand in order to join together the important funds necessary to its restoration.

Other achievements

Houses of Mrs. Spaak, street Saint-Quentin, 30-32, Brussels, district of the public gardens (1899).
House Van Dijck, Clovis boulevard, 85, Brussels, district of the public gardens (1899-1901).
particular House, street Campenhout, 51, Brussels, district of the public gardens (1901).
Commercial firm and dwelling, street Paul de Jaer, Saint-Gilles (1902).
particular House, Sovereign street, 52, Ixelles (1902).
particular House, street Luther, 28, Brussels, district of the public gardens (1902)
Beyens House, street of Abdication, 4, Brussels, district of the public gardens (1904).
Real with apartments and stores, which occurred Louis Bertrand, 55-65/rue Josaphat 338-340, Schaerbeek (1906).
particular House, roadway of Wavre, Etterbeek
particular House, which occurred of the Volunteers, 2, Turned
particular Maison, which occurred Van Cutsem, 29, Tournai

External bonds

the work of Gustave Strauven
Art nouveau in Brussels

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