Stoclet Palace
| Stoclet Palace | |
|---|---|
 The Stoclet Palace seen from the Avenue de Tervueren/Tervurenlaan | |
Interactive map of the Stoclet Palace area | |
Alternative names | Stoclet House |
General information | |
| Type | Private house |
Architectural style | Vienna Secession |
| Location | Avenue de Tervueren / Tervurenlaan 279–281, 1150 Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium |
| Coordinates | 50°50′07″N 4°24′58″E / 50.83528°N 4.41611°E |
Construction started | 1905 |
Completed | 1911 |
| Client | Adolphe Stoclet |
| Owner | Stoclet family |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | Josef Hoffmann |
| Other designers | Gustav Klimt, Franz Metzner, Fernand Khnopff |
Official name | Stoclet House |
| Type | Cultural |
| Criteria | i, ii |
| Designated | 2009 (33rd session) |
| Reference no. | 1298 |
Region | Europe and North America |
| References | |
| [1] | |
The Stoclet Palace (French: Palais Stoclet [palɛ stɔklɛ]; Dutch: Stocletpaleis [stɔˈklɛːpaːˌlɛis]), also known as the Stoclet House,[2] is a historic mansion in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, a municipality of Brussels, Belgium.[3] It was designed by the Austrian-Moravian architect Josef Hoffmann for the Belgian financier Adolphe Stoclet, and built between 1905 and 1911, in the Vienna Secession style.
Considered Hoffman's masterpiece, the residence is one of the 20th century's most refined and luxurious private houses,[4] and is a visible turning point from historical styles to modern architecture.[5] It is also a prototype of the Art Deco style, featuring geometric volumes, symmetry, straight lines, concrete covered with marble plaques, finely-sculpted ornament, and lavish interiors, including mosaic friezes by Gustav Klimt.[6]
The Stoclet Palace is still owned by the Stoclet family and is not open to visitors. Until recently, no outsider, not even experts helping with restoration, were allowed in.[7] The building has received protected status by the Monuments and Sites Directorate of the Brussels-Capital Region,[1] and it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2009.[2]
The mansion is located at 279–281, avenue de Tervueren/Tervurenlaan, bordering the Square Léopold II/Leopold II-plein.
History
Design and construction
The Stoclet Palace was commissioned by Adolphe Stoclet, a wealthy Belgian financier and art collector. He chose the 35-year-old Austrian architect Josef Hoffmann, who was a founding member of the Vienna Secession, a radical group of designers and artists established in 1897. Hoffman abandoned fashions and styles of the past and produced a building that is an asymmetrical compilation of rectangular blocks, underlined by exaggerated lines and corners.[8]
The Stoclet Palace was the first residential project for the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops), co-founded by Hoffman in 1903. Josef Hoffman and his colleagues designed every aspect of the mansion, down to the door handles and light fittings.[9] In his designs for the Stoclet Palace, Hoffmann was particularly attuned to fashion and to the Viennese identity of the new style of interior, even designing a dress for Madame Stoclet so that she would not clash with her living room decor as she had while wearing a French Paul Poiret gown.[10] Hoffmann presented the plans in 1905, but the construction, in three stages, was not completed until 1911.[11]
During a visit in September 1912, a group of modernist Belgian architects, which included Jean-Baptiste Dewin, described the Stoclet Palace in poetic terms, one writing in the journal Tekhne: "Baudelaire would have dreamt this … marble and gold; it is cold and captivating … The garden is wonderful! But the sun is an accomplice. I have to come back when it is raining."[12][13]
Later history
Adolphe Stoclet died in 1949, and the Stoclet Palace was inherited by his daughter-in-law, Annie Stoclet. The building was classified as a historical monument in 1976.[1] Following Annie's death in 2002, the mansion was inherited by her four daughters.[14] It was designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2009.[2]
The Stoclet Palace has never been open to the public. Press reports have described the mansion as being looked after by two caretakers while there is dissension between Stoclet's four granddaughters as to its future.[14][7] In 2024, however, the Brussels Parliament approved a motion ordering its opening for a period of maximum 15 days per year,[15] although it remains unclear when this will be put into practice.
Description
The Stoclet Palace is located at 279–281, avenue de Tervueren/Tervurenlaan, in the Woluwe-Saint-Pierre municipality of Brussels.[16] The building was designed to appear from the road as a stately city mansion. Seen from the garden at the back, it "becomes a villa suburbana with its rear façade sculpturally modelled by bay windows, balconies and terraces" in the words of architectural historian Annette Freytag, which gave the Stoclet family a building with "all the advantages of a comfortable urban mansion and a country house at the same time."[17]
The integration of architects, artists, and artisans makes the Stoclet Palace an example of a Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), one of the defining characteristics of Art Nouveau. Paul Dujardin, art historian and former director-general of the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, considers the mansion to be the first true Art Deco building, but he does not identify a distinct Belgian style, instead highlighting the country's "in-between hybridity".[18]
Exterior
The exterior of the Palace is assembled out of large marble cubes, mounting to a tower that rises above the stairwell. The starkness of the exterior is softened by artistic windows, which break through the line of the eaves, the rooftop conservatory, and bronze sculptures of four nude males by Franz Metzner, which crown the tower. Regimented upright balustrades line the balconies, touched with Art Nouveau ornamentation.[19]
Interior
The interior of the building is much more lavish than the exterior, with upright, geometrically coordinated furniture and minimal clutter. This was an avant-garde approach, presenting a "reformed interior" where function dictated form. It is decorated with marble panelling and artworks,[9] including large mosaic friezes[20] designed by Gustav Klimt and implemented on site by Leopold Forstner,[21] as well as murals by Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel.[22] Klimt's sketches for the dining room are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna.
Windows of the Stoclet Palace.jpg)
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The cupola
The dining room, with furniture by Hoffmann and mosaic frieze by Klimt
See also
References
Citations
- 1 2 3 Région de Bruxelles-Capitale (2016). "Palais Stoclet" (in French). Brussels. Retrieved 30 July 2022.
- 1 2 3 "Stoclet House". UNESCO World Heritage Centre. 4 July 2009. Retrieved 4 July 2009.
- ↑ Sharp 2002, p. 44.
- ↑ Watkin 2005, p. 548.
- ↑ Sarnitz 2016, pp. 55–61.
- ↑ Texier 2019, pp. 5–7.
- 1 2 Wise, Michael Z. (1 February 2012). "An Enchanted House Becomes a Family's Curse". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 9 July 2022.
- ↑ "70 Wonders of the Modern World". Reader's Digest, 1998, p. 1.
- 1 2 Sembach 2002, p. 225.
- ↑ Intimus : interior design theory reader. Taylor, Mark, 1955-, Preston, Julieanna. Chichester: John Wiley. 2006. ISBN 9780470015704. OCLC 63397636.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) - ↑ Sarnitz 2016, pp. 54–61.
- ↑ Freytag 2010.
- ↑ "Jean-Baptiste Dewin". Hotel Riez. Retrieved 22 September 2025.
- 1 2 Baring, Louis (10 February 2007). "Glimpse into Klimt's hidden dream world". The Telegraph. Retrieved 24 July 2014.
- ↑ Rombaut, Lore (20 April 2024). "Brussels parlement beslist: publiek moet toegelaten worden in Stocletpaleis" [Brussels Parliament decides: public must be admitted to Stoclet Palace] (in Dutch). VRT. Retrieved 17 September 2024.
- ↑ Fletcher 1996, p. 1072.
- ↑ Freytag, Annette, "The Stoclet Frieze" in Natter 2012, pp. 103–104
- ↑ Rankin, Jennifer (30 March 2025). "Gold leaf and Gatsby: Brussels lays claim to birth of art deco with year of celebrations". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
- ↑ Freytag 2010, p. 347.
- ↑ Freytag 2010, p. 366.
- ↑ "Palais Stoclet ist Weltkulturerbe". www.oe24.at. 27 June 2009. Retrieved 15 June 2016.
- ↑ The Renaissance Society, Modern Austrian Painting Archived 6 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine
Bibliography
- Freytag, Anette (2010). "Josef Hoffmann's unknown masterpiece: the garden of Stoclet House in Brussels (1905-1911)". Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes. 30 (4): 337–372. doi:10.1080/14601176.2010.485733. ISSN 1460-1176. S2CID 161356977.
- Fletcher, Banister (1996). Sir Banister Fletcher's a History of Architecture (20th ed.). London: Architectural Press. ISBN 978-0-7506-2267-7.
- Honnef, Klaus (2000). Art of the 20th Century. Cologne: Taschen. ISBN 978-3-8228-5907-0.
- Sarnitz, August (2016). Josef Hoffmann, L'univers de la beauté (in French). Cologne: Taschen. ISBN 978-3-8365-5038-3.
- Sharp, Dennis (2002). Twentieth Century Architecture. Mulgrave: Images Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-86470-085-5.
- Sembach, Klaus-Jurgen (2002). Art Nouveau. Cologne: Taschen. p. 225. ISBN 978-3-8228-2022-3.
- Texier, Simon (2019). Art Déco (in French). Rennes: Editions Ouest-France. ISBN 978-2-7373-8172-0.
- Natter, Tobias, ed. (2012). Gustav Klimt. Taschen. ISBN 978-3-8365-2795-8.
- Watkin, David (2005). A History of Western Architecture. London: Laurence King Publishing. ISBN 978-1-85669-459-9.
Further reading
- Dumoulin, Michel (2010). Les Stoclet. Microcosme d'ambitions et de passions (in French). Brussels: Le Cri. ISBN 9782871065654.
- Kurrent, Friedrich; Strobl, Alice (1991). Das Palais Stoclet in Brüssel (in German). Salzburg: Verlag Galerie Welz. ISBN 978-3-85349-162-1.
- Noever, Peter (2006). Yearning for Beauty: the Wiener Werkstätte and the Stoclet House. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz Publishers. ISBN 978-3-7757-1778-6.
- Sekler, Eduard F. (1967). Rudolf Wittkower (ed.). The Stoclet House by Joseph Hoffmann. Essays in the History of Architecture. London: Phaidon. OCLC 82161568.
- Sekler, Eduard F. (1985). Josef Hoffmann: the architectural work: monograph and catalogue of works. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-06572-4.
- Klimt, Gustav (2012). Christoph Thun-Hohenstein; Beate Murr (eds.). Gustav Klimt: Erwartung und Erfüllung: Entwürfde zum Mosaikfries im Palais Stoclet [Expectation and fulfillment: cartoons for the mosaic frieze at Stoclet House] (in German and English). Ostfildern: Hatje/Cantz. ISBN 978-3-7757-3305-2.
- Weidinger, Alfred (2011). "100 Years of Palais Stoclet - New Information on the Genesis of Gustav Klimt's Construction and Interior Decoration". In Husslein-Arco, Agnes (ed.). Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffmann. Pioneers of Modernism. Munich: Prestel. pp. 204–251. ISBN 978-3-7913-5149-0.
External links
Media related to Stoclet Palace at Wikimedia Commons- "1910-1918 pictures of the Palais Stoclet". Bildarchiv Foto Marburg (in German). German documentation Center for Art History. Retrieved 18 October 2011. Rare collection of 52 B/W pictures from the exterior, the interior and the gardens of the Stoclet Palace taken in the years following the completion of the building.
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1 Listing shared with six other countries, which includes Belgium's Maison Guiette; 2 Listing shared with France; 3 Listing shared with the Netherlands, which includes Belgium's Wortel; 4 Listing shared with France 5 Listing shared with seven other countries, which includes Belgium's Spa; 6 Listing shared with seventeen other countries, which includes Belgium's Sonian Forest. | ||
