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Ela Kaçel

Müge İmga / Inar 3011

20 January 2009

In this article, I want to talk about Tassel House which is the first fully developed

example of architecture in the Art Nouveau Style.

First of all I want to start with Art Nouveau that is an international movement and style

of art, architecture and applied art”especially the decorative arts”that peaked in popularity at

the turn of the 20th century. It is characterized by organic, especially floral and other plant-

inspired motifs, as well as highly-stylized, flowing curvilinear forms. It is an approach to

design according to which artists should work on everything from architecture to furniture,

making art part of everyday life. The organic forms of Belgium Art Nouveau architecture as

established by Victor Horta generated revolutionary ideas and marked the beginning of

modern architecture and design. Plant-like forms and sensuous double curves, that would later

be known as "the Belgian line", were adapted to every detail of the building from the main

structure to whole interior decoration elements, as colored window glasses, lamps, wooden

furniture, wrought-iron and metalwork, door handles and even the house bell. Very popular

today, Horta's linear designs have inspired many modern silver and glass works, decorative

objects and jewelry.

Anthony Lambert says that Art Nouveau is an artistic weaving together of traditional

influences Japanese, the Arts and Crafts movement, medieval manuscript illumination,

Rococo line and composition- into an innovative synthesis emphasizing natural imagery in an

era of industrialization.
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Between the years of approximately 1890 to 1910, the Art Nouveau movement began

resurrecting the sinuous line from past influences to create an elegant whiplash curve. The

impact of the movement is still present in modern day design and art. In architecture,

hyperbolas and parabolas in windows, arches, and doors are common, and decorative

moldings 'grow' into plant-derived forms. Like most design styles, Art Nouveau sought to

harmonize its forms. Art Nouveau in architecture and interior design eschewed the eclectic

revival styles of the Victorian era. Though Art Nouveau designers selected and 'modernized'

some of the more abstract elements of Rococo style, such as flame and shell textures, they

also advocated the use of highly stylized organic forms as a source of inspiration, expanding

the 'natural' repertoire to embrace seaweed, grasses, and insects.

As for history, Brussels that was also at the center of the development of Art Nouveau.

It’s obvious that many of its earliest and most important creations were either made or

exhibited in the city. At this time Brussels enjoyed a new prosperity from the wealth it had

gained during the Industrial Revolution and Belgium's colonial expansion in Africa. The city

underwent great change, and Art Nouveau became the style most representative of the

transformation. In 1893 Victor Horta, the leading architect-designer in Brussels, designed

Tassel House, the first fully developed example of architecture in the Art Nouveau style.

To begin with Victor Horta which was the architect for this elegant row house, built

from 1893-97.The restrained, Art Nouveau facade is almost Neoclassical in appearance,

although a few details do suggest a more exuberant, free-flowing interior (David Dernie and

Alastair Carew-Cox's fabulous book, "Victor Horta", 1995.).

David Dernie says that Victor Horta was the architect for this sophisticated home, built

from 1893-97.  His mastery of composition speaks for itself in this lovely interior

view. Victor Horta was one of the leading architect and designer of Art Nouveau and his style
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inspired many modernist artists all over Europe. He also influenced the aesthetic ideals the

avant-garde group of artists in Belgium, such as "Les Vingt" and "La Libre Esthétique".

After studying drawing, textiles and architecture at the Fine Arts Academy in Gent, he

established his own practice in Brussels in and in 1893 he built the first Art Nouveau building,

Tassel House.

He was very influential in the birth of Belgian Art Nouveau Style, along with fellow

architects Henri van de Velde, Paul Hankar and jeweler Philippe Wolfers. Inspired by nature,

his style was swirling and linear, like the stems of plants. Tending towards unity, every

material, surface, ornament, inside or outside, was harmoniously assembled with great fluidity

and highly detailed by innovative shapes and lines. The houses are especially significant for

their interior architecture: the irregularly shaped rooms open freely onto one another at

different levels; the natural design of an iron balustrade is echoed in the curving decorative

motifs of the mosaic floors or plaster walls.

Briefly, Art Nouveau whiplash line at its best with a flowing rhythm that just won't

stop; the line climbs up the wall and disrupts all sense of rigid, geometric right angles in the

process; nothing corners, but rather curves around in an organic, sinuous way. Goes well

beyond "form follows function" in this decorative, highly inventive space where a linear flow

disrupts the old, static box space of previous room designs. Horta makes extensive use of

metal construction. Highly stylized to the point of line for line's sake. It is also the first

movement to truly become international. Picks up on the "stylized flower" motif from the the

Arts and Crafts movement, but leaves that movement's historical trappings behind. Moves

further away from the 19th c. world of nature and closer to the 20th c. world of abstraction in

the play of line for line's sake. In this new architecture, which was freed from the burden of
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mixed styles and made extensive use of new techniques and materials, they saw the

expression of their time--" temps nouveaux, art nouveau" .

Ground floor and plans

His introduced vegetal curve dynamic in his building designs and asymetry. His plans

are always very clever and rational. He always uses new materials like iron, large light well in

glass or stain glass, and new technics like central heating or electrical lightenings together

with traditional materials like stone. As an architect, he also designed every part of the house,

from the carpet to the fire-dogs. In his memories, he said "I was not the first architect of my

time to design furniture but I was the first to integrate it to my architecture". As for me, I

appreciate the vegetal curves shapes the transforms the massive stones. 

In this kind of highly personalized architecture, everything is the architect's business.

For the Hotel Tassel Horta designed the complete interior--the panelling, the windows, the

mosaics, the wall paintings, the carpets, the ironwork and even the door handles. He also

ensured the perfect harminization of the lighting and heating equipment. The architecture and

decoration cannot be separated. The line of the load-bearing structures is prolonged and

softened by the decoration, which seems to originate from the supporting pillars and to extend

to the ceilings, the walls, the floor, accentuating the continuity of the interior space.
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Detail of wall decoration (The central stairs as central axe of

the building, the decorative undulating motifs, plans, pictures and models.)

Serpentine curves and counter-curves terminate in a whiplash. In them can be seen the

vital thrust of a growing plant, but a plant with neither flower nor leaf. "What I like in a

plant," said Horta, "is its stem." Making use of the widest possible variety of materials, Horta

exploited the contrasts of texture and colour--the cold smoothness of marble, the ribbing of

dull riveted metal, the softness of light-coloured wood fashioned like sculpture.

Street facade
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When we return main idea of our subject, Tassel House is a town house built by Victor

Horta in Brussels for the Belgian scientist and professor Emile Tassel in 1893-1894. It is

located at 6, Rue Paul-Emile Jansonstraat in Brussels. It is generally considered as the first

true 'Art Nouveau' building, because of its highly innovative plan and its ground breaking use

of materials and decoration. Together with three other town houses of Victor Horta, including

Horta's own house and atelier it was put on the 'UNESCO World Heritage List' in 2000. The

UNESCO commission says that the four major town houses - Hôtel Tassel, Hôtel Solvay,

Hôtel van Eetvelde, and Maison & Atelier Horta - located in Brussels and designed by the

architect Victor Horta, one of the earliest initiators of Art Nouveau, are some of the most

remarkable pioneering works of architecture of the end of the 19 th century. The stylistic

revolution represented by these works is characterised by their open plan, the diffusion of

light, and the brilliant joining of the curved lines of decoration with the structure of the

building. The innovations made in the Hôtel Tassel would mark the style and approach for

most of Horta's later town houses, including the Hôtel van Eetvelde, the Hôtel Solvay and the

architects own house and 'atelier'. It might be superfluous to mention that these houses were

very expensive and only affordable for the rich 'bourgeoisie' with an 'Avant-Garde' taste. For

this reason the pure architectural innovations were not largely followed by other architects.

Most other Art Nouveau dwellings in Belgium and other European countries were inspired by

Horta's 'whiplash' decorative style which is mostly applied to a more traditional building. The

Hôtel Tassel had a decisive influence on the French Art Nouveau architect Hector Guimard

who later developed a personal interpretation of Horta's example.( Wikipedia Encyclopedia,

p.4).
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Main floor and second floor plan

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.
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Model longitudinal section

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. 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. According Françoise Aubry and Jos Vandenbreeden, It consisted of a suite

of rooms on the left side of the building plot flanked by a rather narrow entrance hall with

stairs and a corridor that led to a small garden at the back. From the three room suite only the

first and the last had windows so that the middle room (mostly used as a dining room) was

rather gloomy. The innovations made in the Hôtel Tassel would mark the style and approach

for most of Horta's later town houses, including. It might be superfluous to mention that these

houses were very expensive and only affordable for the rich 'bourgeoisie' with an ' Avant-

Garde' taste. For this reason the pure architectural innovations were not largely followed by
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other architects. (Françoise Aubry and Jos Vandenbreeden, Horta, Art Nouveau to

Modernism, Ludion Press Ghent)

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.( Harry N. Abrams Publishers New York, 1996.).
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Vestibule

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
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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. 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. This harmony id achieved by Horta's

incredible attention to detail; every part of the house was meticulously designed, and closely
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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", 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
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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.

According to University of Florida, The architect's distinctive "whiplash line" of his

decorative details was known as the "Horta line"- the best example of the organic, natural

growth abstraction of Art Nouveau forms. The interior had many different spaces on diferent

levels-all interrelated. Horta's ironwork is close to Viollet-le-Duc's illustrations of iron

construction details. It is certainly Horta's first mature work in this style. Horta made a break

with the past here by using stone and the modern material, metal, in domestic architecture.
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The modernity of Horta's town house is also signaled by the extensive use of glass, where the

window sizes may indicate the function of the interior. The facade includes classical elements

like moldings and columns but here some of the columns are iron, not stone, and the

entablature is metal, complete with exposed rivets. In addition, this town house has features

that would become characteristic of Horta's domestic architecture: an open floor plan; a use of

natural light; a unity of architecture, interior decoration, and furniture.

A large bay window extending over two stories, dominates the front facade. While the

entrance is shaded by the classical overhanging lintel with enormous brackets, the rest of the

central bay is glazed and features the lightest and most slender of metal supports. The bowing

forward of the entire central bay has parallels with the linear curves within. Apparently, the

interior is even more striking in its use of linear interior architecture as well as curvilinear

decoration on walls, stairways, and floors.

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The entrance of the Hotel Tassel

At the Tassel House definitively broke with this traditional scheme. In fact he built a

house consisting of three different parts. Two rather conventional buildings in brick and

natural stone - one on the side of the street and one on the side of the garden - were linked by

a steel structure covered with glass. It functions as the connective part in the spatial

composition of the house and contains staircases and landings that connect the different rooms

and floors. Through the glass roof it functions as a light shaft that brings natural light into the

centre of the building. In this part of the house, that could also be used for receiving guests,

Horta made the maximum of his skills as an interior designer. He designed every single detail;

doorhandles, woodwork, panels and windows in stained glass, mosaic floorings, stairrailings,

electric fittings and even the decorative wallpaintings and the furnishing. Horta succeeded in

integrating the lavish decoration without masking the general architectural structures.

In conclusion, early example of Art Nouveau architecture, the Tassel House in

Brussels once again shows the preoccupation of the style with the curving lines of wrought

iron. As with all architecture, Victor Horta's building is functioning in a physical sense, yet its

rhythmic, flowing lines reminds us more of sculpture. Conceived as a "total work of art",
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from the foundations to the minutest detail of its interior decoration, the Hotel Tassel

represented a radical break with the architectural and decorative language of the past.

Bottom of staircase Staircase