La Nouvelle Maison - Henry van de Velde's personal home
Address Avenue Albert 1
City/Neighborhood Tervuren
Style(s)
- Modernism
Original use
- Architect house
Année 1927
Architect(s) and/or artist(s)
- Van de Velde Henry
The fourth and last personal house of Henry van de Velde, designed in 1927, bears witness to his continuous research towards more sobriety and purity.
The style is simple as he himself expressed it: "An architecture reduced to masses, to the dialogue of solids and voids; architecture anchored to the ground, as if it were the very fruit of it".
It is a four-sided house, under a flat roof, in so-called "Belvedere" bricks, hollow joints and concrete. All in horizontalities and rounded angles. Simple rectangular windows at regular intervals. Tubular balustrades.
Even the garden was designed by the architect, using the same materials for the exterior walls.
After the death of his wife Maria Sethe in 1943, van de Velde lived in La Nouvelle Maison until 1947. At the age of 84, he moved to Switzerland, where he ended his days in 1957.
It is a real miracle that this house remained "in its original state" after van de Velde's death. Although abandoned for a few years, nothing was irreparably destroyed.
In 2015, Thomas and Birgit Rabe, lovers of the Bauhaus and van de Velde's work, bought the house. A vast and lengthy renovation project was undertaken; the house had already been listed since 1994.
TER01 - Unless otherwise stated © www.admirable-artdeco.be for all photos