VICTOR HORTA, ARCHITECT OF A EUROPEAN DREAM

Modernity, sworn enemy of art

Synopsis

Brussels, capital of the European Union, is scattered with office blocks and towers. Among them, the vast Tour Sablon, 26 floors of concrete built on the site of Victor Horta's Maison du Peuple.

That demolition remains a wound. The Maison du Peuple was a brick-and-steel structure inaugurated in 1896 for the Belgian Workers' Party, an Art Nouveau masterpiece of visionary architecture, all wrought-iron curves, uniting beauty and purpose.

How did it come to this?