World War I
World War I known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history, it is one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide. On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb Yugoslav nationalist, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, leading to the July Crisis. In response, on 23 July Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia. Serbia's reply failed to satisfy the Austrians, the two moved to a war footing. A network of interlocking alliances enlarged the crisis from a bilateral issue in the Balkans to one involving most of Europe.
By July 1914, the great powers of Europe were divided into two coalitions: the Triple Entente—consisting of France and Britain—and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. Russia felt it necessary to back Serbia and, after Austria-Hungary shelled the Serbian capital of Belgrade on the 28th, partial mobilisation was approved. General Russian mobilisation was announced on the evening of 30 July; when Russia failed to comply, Germany declared war on 1 August in support of Austria-Hungary, with Austria-Hungary following suit on 6th. German strategy for a war on two fronts against France and Russia was to concentrate the bulk of its army in the West to defeat France within four weeks shift forces to the East before Russia could mobilise. On 2 August, Germany demanded free passage through Belgium, an essential element in achieving a quick victory over France; when this was refused, German forces invaded Belgium on 3 August and declared war on France the same day. On 12 August and France declared war on Austria-Hungary.
In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Alliance, opening fronts in the Caucasus and the Sinai Peninsula. The war was fought in and drew upon each power's colonial empire as well, spreading the conflict to Africa and across the globe; the Entente and its allies would become known as the Allied Powers, while the grouping of Austria-Hungary and their allies would become known as the Central Powers. The German advance into France was halted at the Battle of the Marne and by the end of 1914, the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, marked by a long series of trench lines that changed little until 1917. In 1915, Italy opened a front in the Alps. Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in 1915 and Greece joined the Allies in 1917, expanding the war in the Balkans; the United States remained neutral, although by doing nothing to prevent the Allies from procuring American supplies whilst the Allied blockade prevented the Germans from doing the same the U. S. became an important supplier of war material to the Allies.
After the sinking of American merchant ships by German submarines, the revelation that the Germans were trying to incite Mexico to make war on the United States, the U. S. declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917. Trained American forces would not begin arriving at the front in large numbers until mid-1918, but the American Expeditionary Force would reach some two million troops. Though Serbia was defeated in 1915, Romania joined the Allied Powers in 1916 only to be defeated in 1917, none of the great powers were knocked out of the war until 1918; the 1917 February Revolution in Russia replaced the Tsarist autocracy with the Provisional Government, but continuing discontent at the cost of the war led to the October Revolution, the creation of the Soviet Socialist Republic, the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by the new government in March 1918, ending Russia's involvement in the war. This allowed the transfer of large numbers of German troops from the East to the Western Front, resulting in the German March 1918 Offensive.
This offensive was successful, but the Allies rallied and drove the Germans back in their Hundred Days Offensive. Bulgaria was the first Central Power to sign an armistice—the Armistice of Salonica on 29 September 1918. On 30 October, the Ottoman Empire capitulated. On 4 November, the Austro-Hungarian empire agreed to the Armistice of Villa Giusti after being decisively defeated by Italy in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto. With its allies defeated, revolution at home, the military no longer willing to fight, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated on 9 November and Germany signed an armistice on 11 November 1918. World War I was a significant turning point in the political, cultural and social climate of the world; the war and its immediate aftermath sparked numerous uprisings. The Big Four (Britain, the United States, It
Belgium
Belgium the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Western Europe. It is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to the southwest, the North Sea to the northwest, it has a population of more than 11.4 million. The capital and largest city is Brussels; the sovereign state is a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system. Its institutional organisation is structured on both regional and linguistic grounds, it is divided into three autonomous regions: Flanders in the north, Wallonia in the south, the Brussels-Capital Region. Brussels is the smallest and most densely populated region, as well as the richest region in terms of GDP per capita. Belgium is home to two main linguistic groups or Communities: the Dutch-speaking Flemish Community, which constitutes about 59 percent of the population, the French-speaking Community, which comprises about 40 percent of all Belgians. A small German-speaking Community, numbering around one percent, exists in the East Cantons.
The Brussels-Capital Region is bilingual, although French is the dominant language. Belgium's linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in its political history and complex system of governance, made up of six different governments. Belgium was part of an area known as the Low Countries, a somewhat larger region than the current Benelux group of states that included parts of northern France and western Germany, its name is derived after the Roman province of Gallia Belgica. From the end of the Middle Ages until the 17th century, the area of Belgium was a prosperous and cosmopolitan centre of commerce and culture. Between the 16th and early 19th centuries, Belgium served as the battleground between many European powers, earning the moniker the "Battlefield of Europe", a reputation strengthened by both world wars; the country emerged in 1830 following the Belgian Revolution. Belgium participated in the Industrial Revolution and, during the course of the 20th century, possessed a number of colonies in Africa.
The second half of the 20th century was marked by rising tensions between the Dutch-speaking and the French-speaking citizens fueled by differences in language and culture and the unequal economic development of Flanders and Wallonia. This continuing antagonism has led to several far-reaching reforms, resulting in a transition from a unitary to a federal arrangement during the period from 1970 to 1993. Despite the reforms, tensions between the groups have remained, if not increased. Unemployment in Wallonia is more than double that of Flanders. Belgium is one of the six founding countries of the European Union and hosts the official seats of the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Council, as well as a seat of the European Parliament in the country's capital, Brussels. Belgium is a founding member of the Eurozone, NATO, OECD, WTO, a part of the trilateral Benelux Union and the Schengen Area. Brussels hosts several of the EU's official seats as well as the headquarters of many major international organizations such as NATO.
Belgium is a developed country, with an advanced high-income economy. It has high standards of living, quality of life, education, is categorized as "very high" in the Human Development Index, it ranks as one of the safest or most peaceful countries in the world. The name "Belgium" is derived from Gallia Belgica, a Roman province in the northernmost part of Gaul that before Roman invasion in 100 BC, was inhabited by the Belgae, a mix of Celtic and Germanic peoples. A gradual immigration by Germanic Frankish tribes during the 5th century brought the area under the rule of the Merovingian kings. A gradual shift of power during the 8th century led the kingdom of the Franks to evolve into the Carolingian Empire; the Treaty of Verdun in 843 divided the region into Middle and West Francia and therefore into a set of more or less independent fiefdoms which, during the Middle Ages, were vassals either of the King of France or of the Holy Roman Emperor. Many of these fiefdoms were united in the Burgundian Netherlands of the 15th centuries.
Emperor Charles V extended the personal union of the Seventeen Provinces in the 1540s, making it far more than a personal union by the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549 and increased his influence over the Prince-Bishopric of Liège. The Eighty Years' War divided the Low Countries into the northern United Provinces and the Southern Netherlands; the latter were ruled successively by the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs and comprised most of modern Belgium. This was the theatre of most Franco-Spanish and Franco-Austrian wars during the 17th and 18th centuries. Following the campaigns of 1794 in the French Revolutionary Wars, the Low Countries—including territories that were never nominally under Habsburg rule, such as the Prince-Bishopric of Liège—were annexed by the French First Republic, ending Austrian rule in the region; the reunification of the Low Countries as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands occurred at the dissolution of the First French Empire in 1815, after the defeat of Napo
Victor Horta
Victor Pierre Horta was a Belgian architect and designer. John Julius Norwich described him as "undoubtedly the key European Art Nouveau architect." Horta is considered one of the most important names in Art Nouveau architecture. With the construction of his Hôtel Tassel in Brussels in 1892-3, he is sometimes credited as the first to introduce the style to architecture from the decorative arts; the "biomorphic whiplash" style that Horta promoted influenced architect Hector Guimard who used it in projects in France and extended its influence abroad. In 1932 King Albert I of Belgium conferred on Horta the title of Baron for his services to the field of architecture. Four of the buildings he designed have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Born in Ghent, Horta was first attracted to the architectural profession when he helped his uncle on a building site at the age of twelve. Horta had a great interest in music since childhood and, in 1873, went to study musical theory at the Ghent Conservatory.
After being expelled for bad behaviour he joined the Department of Architecture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent instead. In 1878 Horta left for Paris, finding work with architect and designer Jules Debuysson in Montmartre. There he was inspired by the emerging impressionist and pointillist artists, by the possibilities of working in iron and glass; when Horta's father died in 1880, he returned to Belgium and moved to Brussels, married his first wife, with whom he fathered two daughters, went to study architecture at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. In Brussels Horta built a friendship with Paul Hankar, who would also embrace Art Nouveau. Horta did well in his studies and was taken on as an assistant by his professor Alphonse Balat, architect to Leopold II of Belgium. Together they designed the royal Greenhouses of Laeken, Horta's first work to utilise glass and iron. In 1884 Horta won the first Prix Godecharle to be awarded for Architecture, as well as the Grand Prix in architecture on leaving the Royal Academy.
By 1885 Horta was working on his own and was commissioned to design three houses which were built that year. The same year he joined the Central Society of Belgian Architecture. Over the next few years he entered a number of competitions for public work, collaborated with sculptors on statuary and tombs, winning a number of prizes, he focused on the curvature of his designs, believing that the forms he produced were practical and not artistic affectations. During this period, Horta socialised and, in 1888, joined the freemasons as a member of the lodge Les Amis Philanthropes of the Grand Orient of Belgium in Brussels; this ensured a stream of clients when he returned to designing houses and shops from 1893. Horta was appointed Head of Graphic Design for Architecture at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in 1892, before being promoted to Professor of Architecture in 1893, a post he left in 1911 after the university authorities failed to offer him the opportunity to design an extension to the university buildings.
1919 Officer of the Order of the Crown. Member of the Royal Academy of Science and Fine Arts of Belgium 1920: Officer of the Order of Leopold. 1925: Director of the Classe of Beaux-Arts. 1932: Created Baron Horta by Royal Decree. After introducing Art Nouveau in an exhibition held in 1892, Horta was inspired. Commissioned to design a home for professor Emile Tassel, he transfused the recent influences into Hôtel Tassel, completed in 1893; the design had a groundbreaking semi open-plan floor layout for a house of the time, incorporated interior iron structure with curvilinear botanical forms described as “biomorphic whiplash”. Ornate and elaborate designs and natural lighting were concealed behind a stone façade to harmonize the building with the more rigid houses next door; the building has since been recognized as the first appearance of Art Nouveau in architecture. After receiving great acclaim for his designs, Horta was commissioned to complete many other important buildings throughout Brussels.
Enhancing this new architectural style, Horta designed the Hôtel Solvay and his own residence employing iron and stone façade with elaborate iron interiors. During 1894, Horta was elected President of the Central Society of Belgian Architecture, although he resigned the following year following a dispute caused when he was awarded the commission for a kindergarten on rue Saint-Ghislain/Sint-Gissleinsstraat without a public competition. From 1895 to 1899 Horta designed the Volkshuis, a major building for the progressive Belgian Workers' Party consisting of a large complex of offices, meeting rooms, café and a conference and concert hall seating over 2,000 people, its demolition in 1965, in spite of an international protest by over 700 architects, has been described as one of the greatest architectural crimes of the twentieth century. In tune with the public mood, after some ten years designing in the Art Nouveau style that he pioneered and for which his is best known, from the turn of the century Horta's designs started to become simplified and less flamboyant, with more classical references.
This can first be seen in his 1901 extension to his completed Hôtel van Eetvelde, in which he chose to specify a pair of marble columns. Horta and his first wife were divorced in 1906, he married his second wife, Julia Carlsson, in 1908. In 1906, Horta accepted the commission for the new Brugmann University Hospital. Developed to take
Hermann Muthesius
Adam Gottlieb Hermann Muthesius, known as Hermann Muthesius, was a German architect and diplomat best known for promoting many of the ideas of the English Arts and Crafts movement within Germany and for his subsequent influence on early pioneers of German architectural modernism such as the Bauhaus. Muthesius was born in 1861 in the village of Großneuhausen near Erfurt and received early training from his father, a builder. After a period of military service and two years studying philosophy and art history at Frederick William University in Berlin, he enrolled to study architecture at Charlottenburg Technical College in 1883, while working in the office of Reichstag architect Paul Wallot. Following completion of his studies, Muthesius spent 1887 to 1891 working for German construction firm Ende & Böckmann in Tokyo. There he saw his first building completed—a German Evangelical church in the Gothic Revival style—and was able to travel extensively across Asia, he returned to Germany in 1891 where he worked for the Prussian Ministry of Public Works, studied for a time in Italy on stipend, served for two years as the editor of a pair of official construction journals.
In 1896 Muthesius was offered a position as cultural attaché at the German Embassy in London. Muthesius married Anna Trippenbach, a fashion designer and singer; this gave him the opportunity to study report on the ways of the British. He focused the next six years investigating and residential architecture and domestic lifestyle and design, ending with a three-volume report published in 1904 and 1905 as Das englische Haus, his most famous work. Although his subjects were wide-ranging, he was interested in the philosophy and practices of the English Arts and Crafts movement, whose emphasis on function, understatement and honesty to materials he saw as alternatives to the ostentatious historicism and obsession with ornament in German nineteenth century architecture, whose efforts to bring a sense of craftsmanship to industrial design he saw as a significant national economic benefit, he visited Glasgow to investigate the innovative work of the Glasgow School exemplified by the designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, wrote about houses in Birmingham by William Bidlake.
As well as his official reports, Muthesius developed a career as an author, communicating his ideas and observations in an influential series of books and articles that saw him become a significant cultural figure in Germany, culminating in Das englische Haus. His wife wrote about Anti-fashion and how she felt that women were being exploited by German clothing industrialists, her book which incorporated a novel binding designed by Frances MacDonald is considered an important contribution to the Artistic Dress movement. Muthesius wrote about Glasgow's Willow Tearooms for an issue of Dekorative Kunst published in 1905, entirely devoted to A Mackintosh Tea Room in Glasgow, saying that "Today any visitor to Glasgow can rest body and soul in Miss Cranston's Tea Rooms and for a few pence drink tea, have breakfast and dream that he is in fairy land." At the same time he lamented Mackintosh's unrewarded struggle to "hold up the banner of Beauty in this dense jungle of ugliness." Muthesius returned to Germany in 1904 and established himself as an architect in private practice, while retaining a role as an official advisor to the Government of Prussia focusing his time on reforming art and design education in order that more emphasis be put on workshop training.
Over the next two decades he designed a series of houses throughout Germany, drawing upon and cementing the principles and practices expounded in his famous book. By this time Muthesius was recognised as an admirer of English culture, but this laid him open to accusations of divided loyalties. In 1907 he was accused by the Fachverband für die wirtschaftlichen Interessen des Kunstgewerbes of criticising the quality of German industrial products in a lecture in Berlin; the resulting controversy saw several influential designers and industrialists withdraw from the association and set up the Deutscher Werkbund, explicitly aimed at bringing the highest standards of design to mass-produced output. The Deutscher Werkbund was a major influence on the early careers of Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, but although Muthesius was in many ways its spiritual father and served as its chairman from 1910 until 1916, he had little sympathy with the emerging early-modernism, considering both Art Nouveau and the designs of the Bauhaus to be just as much superficial styles as those of the nineteenth century.
Muthesius was one of the major architects who built Germany's first Garden City, Hellerau, a suburb of Dresden, founded in 1909. Its foundation was related with the activities of the Deutscher Werkbund, too. Among the many employees of Muthesius was the German Socialist city planner Martin Wagner, who applied the lessons of the garden city to Berlin on a huge scale, from 1924 to about 1932. Muthesius continued designing houses and writing about domestic architecture until 1927, when he died in a road accident after a site visit in Berlin. Bernhard house, Berlin-Wilmersdorf, Cramer house, Berlin-Zehlendorf, Stilarchitektur und Baukunst Das englische Haus Wie baue ich mein Haus Kleinhaus und Kleinsiedlung Winfried Muthesius Woodham, Twentieth-Century Design, New York, NY, USA and London, UK: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0192842048, OCLC 35777427 Works by or about Hermann Muthesiu
Arts and Crafts movement
The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that began in Britain and flourished in Europe and America between about 1880 and 1920, emerging in Japan in the 1920s as the Mingei movement. It stood for traditional craftsmanship using simple forms, used medieval, romantic, or folk styles of decoration, it advocated economic and social reform and was anti-industrial. It had a strong influence on the arts in Europe until it was displaced by Modernism in the 1930s, its influence continued among craft makers and town planners long afterwards; the term was first used by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson at a meeting of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1887, although the principles and style on which it was based had been developing in England for at least 20 years, it was inspired by the ideas of architect Augustus Pugin, writer John Ruskin, designer William Morris. The movement developed earliest and most in the British Isles and spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America.
It was a reaction against the perceived impoverishment of the decorative arts at the time and the conditions in which they were produced. The Arts and Crafts movement emerged from the attempt to reform design and decoration in mid-19th century Britain, it was a reaction against a perceived decline in standards that the reformers associated with machinery and factory production. Their critique was sharpened by the items that they saw in the Great Exhibition of 1851 which they considered to be excessively ornate and ignorant of the qualities of the materials used. Art historian Nikolaus Pevsner writes that the exhibits showed "ignorance of that basic need in creating patterns, the integrity of the surface", as well as displaying "vulgarity in detail". Design reform began with Exhibition organizers Henry Cole, Owen Jones, Matthew Digby Wyatt, Richard Redgrave, all of whom deprecated excessive ornament and impractical or badly made things; the organizers were "unanimous in their condemnation of the exhibits."
Owen Jones, for example, complained that "the architect, the upholsterer, the paper-stainer, the weaver, the calico-printer, the potter" produced "novelty without beauty, or beauty without intelligence." From these criticisms of manufactured goods emerged several publications which set out what the writers considered to be the correct principles of design. Richard Redgrave's Supplementary Report on Design analyzed the principles of design and ornament and pleaded for "more logic in the application of decoration." Other works followed in a similar vein, such as Wyatt's Industrial Arts of the Nineteenth Century, Gottfried Semper's Wissenschaft, Industrie und Kunst, Ralph Wornum's Analysis of Ornament, Redgrave's Manual of Design, Jones's Grammar of Ornament. The Grammar of Ornament was influential, liberally distributed as a student prize and running into nine reprints by 1910. Jones declared that ornament "must be secondary to the thing decorated", that there must be "fitness in the ornament to the thing ornamented", that wallpapers and carpets must not have any patterns "suggestive of anything but a level or plain".
A fabric or wallpaper in the Great Exhibition might be decorated with a natural motif made to look as real as possible, whereas these writers advocated flat and simplified natural motifs. Redgrave insisted that "style" demanded sound construction before ornamentation, a proper awareness of the quality of materials used. "Utility must have precedence over ornamentation." However, the design reformers of the mid 19th century did not go as far as the designers of the Arts and Crafts Movement. They were more concerned with ornamentation than construction, they had an incomplete understanding of methods of manufacture, they did not criticize industrial methods as such. By contrast, the Arts and Crafts movement was as much a movement of social reform as design reform, its leading practitioners did not separate the two; some of the ideas of the movement were anticipated by A. W. N. Pugin, a leader in the Gothic revival in architecture. For example, he advocated truth to material and function, as did the Arts and Crafts artists.
Pugin articulated the tendency of social critics to compare the faults of modern society with the Middle Ages, such as the sprawling growth of cities and the treatment of the poor—a tendency that became routine with Ruskin and the Arts and Crafts movement. His book Contrasts drew examples of bad modern buildings and town planning in contrast with good medieval examples, his biographer Rosemary Hill notes that he "reached conclusions in passing, about the importance of craftsmanship and tradition in architecture that it would take the rest of the century and the combined efforts of Ruskin and Morris to work out in detail." She describes the spare furnishings which he specified for a building in 1841, "rush chairs, oak tables", as "the Arts and Crafts interior in embryo." The Arts and Crafts philosophy was derived in large measure from John Ruskin's social criticism, which related the moral and social health of a nation to the qualities of its architecture and to the nature of work. Ruskin considered the sort of mechanized production and division of labour, created in the industrial revolution to be "servile labour", he thought that a healthy and moral society required independent workers who designed the things that they made.
He believed factory-made works to be "dishonest," and that handwork and craftsmanship merged dignity with labor. His followers favoured craft production over industrial manufacture and were concerned about the loss
Paul Hankar
Paul Hankar was a Belgian architect and furniture designer, an innovator in the Art Nouveau style. He was born at the son of a stonemason, he studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where he met fellow student Victor Horta. Like Horta, he studied the techniques of forged iron, which he would use in many of his buildings, he began his career as a sculptor of funeral monuments. From 1879 to 1892 he worked in the office of architect Hendrik Beyaert, where he obtained his architectural training. Under Beyaert, he was chief designer for the Palacio de Chávarri in Bilbao, constructed for the businessman Víctor Chávarri, he opened his own office in Brussels in 1893, began construction of his own house, the Maison Hankar. This and Victor Horta's Hôtel Tassel, are considered the first two houses built in the Art Nouveau style. A circa-1894 poster by his friend and frequent collaborator, Adolphe Crespin, advertises Hankar's practice on the Rue Defacqz; the façade of Maison Hankar expresses the building's structure—the eastern third, containing the entrance and stairs, is offset a half-story from the western two-thirds, containing the public rooms.
A three-story projecting box-bay, supported on stone corbels, provides ample light to the second and third floor rooms and a balcony for the fourth. Mural panels by Crespin appear in an arcaded frieze at the eaves; the interplay between heavy Renaissance Revival elements and materials versus light Art Nouveau detailing and decoration results in a vivid composition. In 1896, he presented a project for a "Cité des Artistes" for the seaside town of Westende, an artists' cooperative with housing and studios. Although the project never was realized, it would inspire the Darmstadt Artists' Colony in Darmstadt and the artists of the Vienna Secession. For the 1897 World's Fair in Brussels, he contributed to the design of the Congo section, which became known for its full employment of the Art Nouveau, he lectured on "New Brussels," his vision for an urban redevelopment of the city, never realized. That year, he participated in the Colonial Exposition at Tervuren, where he coordinated the works of several artisans and furniture designers.
He designed a monumental stone bench, carved by the Ecausines and Soignies quarries, to be exhibited in the Mine and Metallurgy Section of the Exposition Universelle in Paris. King Leopold II of Belgium bought the bench at the close of the exposition, donated it to a park in the Koninginlaan neighborhood of Ostend, where it was installed by 1905; the bench was removed in 1971 to expand a parking lot, destroyed. Using Hankar's surviving drawings, a replica bench was carved for the park, installed on the same foundations as the original, he was a professor of engineering at the School of Applied Arts in Schaerbeek, a professor of architectural history at the Institut des Hautes Etudes of the University of Brussels. He worked as editor of a magazine that promoted the Art Nouveau style. Hankar died in Brussels at age 41. Mausoleum of Charles Rogier, Saint-Josse-ten-Noode Cemetery, Brussels. Palacio de Chávarri, Plaza Moyúa, Spain. Designed while Hankar worked in Hendrik Beyaert's office. Atelier Alfred Crick, 64 Rue Simonis, Brussels.
Jan van Beers Monument, Antwerp. Maison Hankar, 71 Rue Defacqz, Brussels. Maisons Jaspar, 76, 78 & 80 Rue de la Croix de Pierre, Brussels. Maisons Hanssens, 13 & 15 Avenue Edouard Ducpétiaux, Brussels. Maison Zegers-Regnard, 83 Chaussée de Charleroi, Brussels. 47 Avenue Edouard Ducpétiaux, Brussels. Chemiserie Niguet, 13 Rue Royale, Brussels. Maison and Pharmacy Peeters, 6-8 Rue Lebeau, Brussels. Boulangerie Timmermans, 551 Rue De Herve, Liège; the three-story façade was covered by murals by Adolphe Crespin. Hôtel Renkin, Brussels. Hôtel Ciamberlani, 48 Rue Defacqz, Brussels. Sanatorium, Kraainem. Hôtel Janssens, 50 Rue Defacqz, Brussels. Hôtel Kleyer, 25 Rue de Ruysbroeck, Brussels. Maison Aglave, 7 Rue Antoine Bréart, Brussels. Maison Bartholomé and its Studio, Brussels. Jean-François Willems Monument, Place Saint-Bavon, Isidore De Rudder, sculptor. Hankar designed the pedestal. Monumental stone bench – exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris –. Replica stone bench, Koninginlaan Park, Ostend. Stool, Design Museum, Ghent.
Chair, Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels. Exhibited at the 1897 Exposition Internationale de Bruxelles. Mailbox, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Coffee table from Hôtel Renkin, Design Museum, Ghent. Dining table from Hôtel Ciamberlani, Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Sideboard from Hôtel Ciamberlani. Card table from Hôtel Ciamberlani. Side chair from Hôtel Ciamberlani. Swivel chair. Chair with woven leather back. Mahogany dining table, Galerie Yves Macaux. Furniture and interiors, American Bar and Grill-Room, Grand Hôtel de Bruxelles. Pair of folding screens – sold at Christie's Auctions, London, 3 November 2004 – Galerie Yves Macaux. Tabouret – sold at Phillips Auctions, New York, 15 December 2010. Stool from Compagnie Générale des Céramiques d'Architecture, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California. An identical stool is at Galerie Yves Macaux. Chair, Cinquantenaire Museum
Boekentoren
The Boekentoren, is a famous building located in Ghent, designed by the Belgian architect Henry van de Velde. It is part of the Ghent University Library and houses 3 million books; the Boekentoren is directly adjacent to the Blandijn, the buildings of the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy. In 1933 the famous Flemish architect Henry van de Velde was commissioned to design a building for the Library and the Institutes of Art History, Veterinarian Studies and Pharmaceutical sciences of the Ghent University on the premises of the former De Vreese Alley on the Blandijnberg. Situated on the highest ground in the city, the site offered the architect a unique opportunity to give to Ghent its fourth tower, not for the ringing of bells this time, but for books. With its height of 64 metres, the book tower reaches out to the sky above Ghent alongside its mediaeval predecessors to mark the city skyline and to put the university visibly on the map. Together with the 3 towers, the so called "Tower of Wisdom" helped Ghent realising the dream the town had since it hosted the World's Fair in 1913 of creating a "Parade of Towers".
The famous three towers of the Middle Ages: the Saint-Nicolas Church, the Belfry and the Saint Bavo Cathedral and the modernist Booktower. Constructed in concrete – an innovation in those days – using the equally innovative technique of sliding shuttering, the tower was given the shape of a Greek cross to symbolize the connection between time and space, merging heaven and earth. Twenty storeys above and four below ground level accommodate a line-up of some 46 kilometres of printed material, or over 3 million items. Supporting the vertical lines of the tower and the books on the shelves are the horizontal lines of the open books on the long tables of the magnificent reading-room, the rectangular courtyard that bathes in daylight, the reading-room for manuscripts, safely shielded from daylight at the north side of the edifice; the tower was inaugurated in 1942 and recognized as a monument in 1992. 70 years after its completion, a thorough restoration started, including the famous Belvedère and the gorgeous interiors.
The occasion, however, is used to make the tower more accessible to the general public. On the other hand, the building will be made to meet the demands of modern library management as far as protection and management of the collection are concerned; the tower will, not only be restored, but thoroughly updated. A three floor underground repository is built under the inner garden; the entire operation is the work of a team around the architects Daem. Restoration started in 2012 and will last at least until 2017, when Ghent University celebrates its 200th birthday; the restoration began with the private person Andre Singer who initiated a campaign to make the university aware of the great architectural value of the building, of the need of restoration. During World War II the tower was taken by the German Army because of the great city view they had over there. There is a pool table in the Belvedère and only the inhabitants of the building know how it got there… The Booktower houses about 46 kilometers of books and other material.
In 2007 the Flemish Television Centre VRT has nominated the belvedère of the book tower for their program "Monumentenstrijd". This "Battle between Monuments" was based on the popular BBC show Restoration, which had many viewers in Belgium On the 3rd of April 2013 the Booktower figured in the Google logo to celebrate the 150th birthday of Henry van de Velde. Ghent University Library The Boekentoren, BE, archived from the original on 2010-02-21. De Centrale Bibliotheek en het voormalig Hoger Instituut van Kunstgeschiedenis en Oudheidkunde van de Universiteit Gent, De Singer studie, 2003. Boekentoren Belvedère in 360°, BE: Visoog. "part 1", Boekentoren 2.0, Vimeo. "part 2", Boekentoren 2.0, Vimeo. "part 3", Boekentoren 2.0, Vimeo
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