Hôtel Tassel: Horta Reinvents the Heart of the House

In a bourgeois house of the period, the best rooms face the street or the garden. In the middle, the stairs and corridors stay in the shadows. Horta does the opposite: he places an open space at the center, linking two wings, and sets the staircase in it beneath a glass roof.

You understand it by walking through. Going up, you already glimpse the next floor; from a landing, the eye crosses a room, then rises toward the light coming down from the roof. On the floor, the mosaic unrolls its curving lines to the foot of the steps. The rooms are no longer discovered one by one behind closed doors: they communicate.

Metal and glass make this possible. Horta does not hide the structure: he leaves it visible, refines it, extends it in curves into the decoration. On the street side, the balcony railing offers a foretaste.

The same year, Paul Hankar was also working on a founding house of Brussels Art Nouveau. The two architects did not speak the same language, but both refused to copy the styles of the past. With Horta, the break begins with the plan, even before the decoration.

Horta also designed furniture for Tassel. Then the house changed hands and use: it housed the fashion house Norine, before being cut up into small apartments in 1956. The partitions broke up precisely the sequence of spaces that had made its reputation. Bought by Jean Delhaye, it was later restored.

Since 2000, it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site along with three other Horta houses. The word “hôtel” here means a large private residence, not an establishment for travelers. This one can be visited only on certain occasions.