As ever, the annual opening of the Royal Greenhouses at Laeken will inspire architecture fans as well as green-fingered visitors, says Adrian Mourby
From 19 April to 12 May this year the Royal Greenhouses at Laeken, just outside Brussels, will be opened to the public. And although there will be some 5,000 plants on show – including giant ferns more than 250 years old – this annual event is about much more than vegetation. It represents a unique opportunity to see the collaboration of two of Belgium’s best-known architects: Alphonse Balat, who was Leopold II’s favourite designer from 1851 to his death in 1895, and Baron Victor Horta, the creator of Belgian Art Nouveau.
At the time of their work at Laeken, young Horta was just an assistant – a thin-skinned but hugely ambitious 23-year-old Flemish draughtsman. By contrast, 66-year-old Balat had already spent 10 years of his life redeveloping the royal home at Laeken, and would continue this work until his death 11 years later. Interestingly, the Saxe-CoburgGotha family has always lived in this 18th-century country house rather than the Palais Royale in Brussels, which they use instead as ‘the office’.
Alphonse Balat first met his client Leopold II – later to become known as Belgium’s ‘builder king’ – when Leopold was only 13. Four years later in 1851 Leopold – by this time the Duke of Brabant – appointed Balat his personal architect. He liked the understated grandeur of Balat’s strict neo-classicism.
When Leopold came to the throne in 1865 he charged Balat with making Brussels look truly regal. Judging the old Palais Royale to be too modest for a king of his stature, Leopold had Balat extend it repeatedly. Over the next 30 years the architect added imposing features such as the Grand Staircase, the Throne Room and the Grande Galerie. Using money from his private African colony in the Congo, Leopold provided Balat with a huge budget, and the palace almost doubled in size during Leopold’s 44-year reign.
Balat also became part of the history of the nearby Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, which had had a curious beginning many years earlier. Napoleon had ransacked much of Europe during his conquests, filling the Louvre with foreign art treasures. As the Louvre filled up, the French occupying Brussels established an overspill museum in a wing of the old Palais Royale. In 1803 this collection passed to the city of Brussels and, in 1830, to the new Kingdom of the Belgians.
Between 1874 and 1880 Balat built Leopold a huge new gallery to house the nation’s art collection. It had a neoclassical façade adorned with Corinthian columns and busts of Flemish painters. The impressive but cold main hall contained the epic canvas Episode of the Belgian Revolution of 1830 by Charles Gustave Wappers – a highly romanticised image of the recent revolution that had brought the SaxeCoburg-Gotha dynasty to power. This was the kind of building Leopold enjoyed.
Balat wasn’t the only architect helping transform Brussels into a quasi-imperial city for the builder king. In 1856 Brussels’ controversial inspector of buildings, Joseph Poelaert, had rebuilt the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie for Leopold’s father. In 1866 he began work on the city’s vast Palais de Justice in the Marolles district. It took 17 years to construct this vast, intimidating complex that still dominates Brussels’ skyline, and Poelaert died – allegedly insane – before it was completed. The building was widely hated from the outset, and the word ‘architect’ is still a term of abuse in Les Marolles. One of the few fans of the complex was Adolf Hitler; when his troops invaded in 1940 he sent party architect Albert Speer to report in detail how it had been constructed.
Alphonse Balat’s work was of an altogether gentler hue. In 1874 Leopold II asked him to design a winter garden at the royal residence of Laeken Park. He particularly wanted it to incorporate an orangery. The project was hugely ambitious, attempting spans in glass and steel inspired by, and even surpassing, what had been achieved at London’s Crystal Palace. The work took 21 years to complete, and 10 years into the project Balat recruited the 23-year-old Horta as his draughtsman. According to Horta’s memoirs the two men worked happily together, rising to the challenge of creating this 14,200m² complex.
Horta admired his master greatly, and was distressed when Balat died in 1895, the same year as the Serres Royales – Royal Greenhouses – were completed. Their final triumph was the so-called Iron Church, a domed greenhouse so lofty and impressive that Leopold initially used it as the royal chapel.
Curiously, however, the buiding is atypical of Balat, that doyen of neoclassicism. Anyone fortunate enough to visit Laeken will see that the sinuous curves into which iron columns were formed actually prefigure Art Nouveau. Clearly the brief – to create soaring open spaces using glass and iron – had brought forth a whole new look.
It wasn’t long before Victor Horta was putting the lessons he’d learned at Laeken into effect elsewhere. In 1889 he constructed a pavilion at King Leopold’s Parc du Cinquantenaire to house a bas-relief by Antwerp sculptor Jef Lambeaux. The building is now known as Pavilion Horta-Lambeaux, and can still be visited.
Greater work was to come. Between the years 1892 and 1893 Horta worked on Hôtel Tassel, a private home in Brussels for a forward-looking professor of geometry. With its elaborate flowing designs, ambitious use of glass and scrolled ironwork, and clever use of natural light, Hôtel Tassel is one of the world’s first Art Nouveau homes, although Horta concealed its originality behind a more traditional stone façade so it didn’t contrast too obviously with the houses next door.
Horta abandoned circumspection in 1898 when he designed his own house – now the Horta Museum – in Rue Américaine. This is unabashed Art Nouveau inside and out. Of particular note is the skilfully curved and mirrored lightwell over the main staircase.
Along with Hôtel van Eetvelde (1895-1898) and Hôtel Solvay (1895-1900), the Hôtel Tassel and the Horta House inspired a revolution in European architecture. Indeed, the four buildings have been jointly designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. They were the inspiration behind a building boom that made Brussels one of the great Art Nouveau cities of Europe and represented a complete break with the strict classicism of Balat’s royal quarter. Yet none of it would have happened if Horta hadn’t spent those 10 years working alongside the man he called his master.
Don’t miss…
Where to see Balat and Horta in Brussels
Balat
Palais Royale
Place de Palais, Brussels, tel. (0)2 551 2020
Open to the public: July–September except Mondays Admission: free
Opening hours: 10.30am–5pm
Metro: Parc
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts
3 Rue de la Régence, Brussels, tel. (0)2 508 3211, www.fine-arts-museum.be
Open to the public: daily except Mondays
Admission: €5 adults, €3,5 seniors and students, €2 children
Opening hours: 10am–5pm
Metro: Parc or Centrale
Balat and Horta
Serres Royales de Laeken Domaine Royal de Laeken, Avenue du Parc Royal, Brussels, tel. (0)2 513 8940 (information), tel. (0)2 551 2020 (booking), www.opt.be
Opening hours: 2008 (18 April–12 May): Saturday & Sunday 9.30am4pm & 8pm– 10pm; Tuesday–Thursday 9.30am–4pm; Friday 1pm–4pm & 8pm–10pm
Admission: €2,50, under-18s free
There are special openings for wheelchair visitors.
Tram: 23, 52, 53, 92
Horta
Musée Horta 25 Rue Américaine, Brussels, tel. (0)2 543 0490, www.hortamuseum.be
Open to the public: daily except Mondays
Admission: €5
Opening hours: 2pm–5.30pm
Tram: 91 or 92
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