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Throughout history, the worlds of art and politics have collided countless times. Whether it's a Banksy mural protesting the jailing of fellow artists, a statue of Stalin built in Soviet Russia, or Picasso’s anti-war painting Massacre in Korea, political art has a deeply entrenched place in society. However, when most people think of “political art” they conjure images of feminist sculptures or traditional paintings -- very few people would think of architecture as political. But what could be more political than housing, meeting spaces, government buildings, and public resources like libraries and hospitals?
Victor Horta, a nineteenth century Belgian architect and “international figure in the heyday of Art Nouveau” (Aubry, et al., 176) understood this intersection of politics and art. Horta considered “the social and cultural mutations and evolutions… [and] became aware of the need for new architectural programmes that had to meet the expectations of this period” (Collette, et al., 373). By keeping current events and trends in mind, Horta was able to create buildings that reflected the values, innovations, and purposes of his clients.
One commission of Horta’s allowed him to showcase his ability to combine form and function in a way that both appeals to the client’s purposes and communicates moral values and ideologies. Victor Horta’s Maison du Peuple is an excellent example of the way architecture can be used to send political and social messages while serving a clear functional purpose. Maison du Peuple serves as a people’s house but is elevated by Horta’s use of modern materials and innovative design concepts that match the ideology of his commissioners. In order to get the full scope of this work, though, one must understand the historical context surrounding the architect and his native country of Belgium.
As Belgium was coming to the end of its “long nineteenth century” (Buzan et al., 620) -- a time of political revolution, technological innovation, and social change -- the country was seeing increased spread of socialist and Marxist ideologies. Consequently, the Belgian Workers’ Party was formed by a group of craftsmen in 1885 and became Belgium’s first major socialist party. Because they were a new group, the Workers’ Party had no formal meeting space other than public squares and restaurants. The Workers’ Party leaders knew they needed a people’s house, a type of meeting place popular with socialists because of its functionality and the collective responsibilities members take on in order to manage the building. People’s houses “were built in the residential areas of workers, standing out by their size and architecture… [they] had a significant impact on the cultural landscape as the center of social and cultural life, not only in many large cities, but also in small towns as well as rural settlements” (Alekseeva, et al., 952).
Victor Horta was commissioned by the Belgian Workers’ Party to design their people’s house, eventually named Maison du Peuple -- which literally translates to “The People’s Home.” Horta used this commission to expand upon some previous techniques he’d cultivated through other projects, including the use of contemporary materials such as iron and glass and the Art Nouveau style he was widely known for. However, the true genius of this building lies in the way its form and function are woven together in an aesthetically pleasing and technologically innovative way. Horta was able to meet the needs of his client while pushing his engineering limits and making an impact on modern architecture that reverberated for decades.
Visually, Maison du Peuple’s exterior is striking. Horta was working with an irregularly shaped plot of land, so the structure’s overall form immediately stands out. The exterior walls have a gentle wave or curving effect, giving the building a sense of movement and wrapping it around the circular plaza on which it was located. Its four storeys include numerous glass windows, allowing natural light into the space and creating a futuristic look for observers in Brussels. There are also names of historic figures important to socialism -- such as Karl Marx -- engraved on the roof, giving Maison du Peuple a somewhat temple-like feel. The iron frame is also visible on the exterior of the building, making it even more striking to the eye of nineteenth century Belgians.
The interior of the building, though, reveals the intricacy and intelligence of Horta’s design. Each of the four storeys of the building serves a functional purpose, going from the pedestrian centers on the ground floor -- like restaurants and stores -- to professional offices and libraries, culminating in the grand auditorium on the top floor where large numbers of people could gather. All of these functions catered directly to the Workers’ Party’s needs; Maison du Peuple had spaces for working class citizens to be educated, participate in formal meetings, and attend recreational activities.
In addition to meeting the varied purposes of the commission, Victor Horta added design elements that mark this building as distinctly modern and influential. One such element is the iron framework, which is exposed on both the interior and exterior walls. This is particularly apparent in images of the auditorium, where the framework is dark and visible against the lighter material of the ceiling. It gives the building an industrial look while simultaneously adding a bit of ornamentation to the overall design of the auditorium.
Horta clearly believed that “material is governed by structural needs” (Collette, et al., 378), an ideal that persists in modern architecture to this day. Through the Maison du Peuple in Brussels, Horta was able to use modern materials -- particularly cast iron -- in ways that clearly met the program of the building and sent moral and political messages.
Horta’s messages come through in the ways these different elements are presented. For example, Horta understood that socialists would be generally opposed to ornamentation and unnecessary decoration. Therefore, he made the iron skeleton of the building visible as a sort of functional decoration. The framework serves a clear purpose in holding the structure together, but it also adds an aesthetic component to the interior and exterior walls, making them symmetrical and pleasing to look at. Horta also incorporated his Art Nouveau roots in subtle ways, including curling balustrades and other slightly curling or curving components. For the most part, though, Maison du Peuple is an industrial-looking structure with artistic elements that elevate it above its basic function as a meeting space into a higher plane of political and social messaging.
As scholars have noted, the “significant structural innovativeness of iron practice clearly proves the importance of the architectural heritage conceived by Victor Horta, the greatest international figure of the Art Nouveau architectural trend” (Collette, et al., 378). Victor Horta was a masterful architect who understood the interplay between form and function; Horta exploited this interplay to create works that sent powerful messages about workers’ rights, socialism, and the future of modern architecture through deceptively simple design concepts.
Architecture is inherently political, and Victor Horta obviously kept this in mind while designing Maison du Peuple. It may not be a beautiful painting or gigantic statue, but the Maison du Peuple was an influential building that architects are still learning from. Unfortunately, scholars can only learn from renderings and old images as the building was demolished in the 1960s by the Belgian government as part of their “Brusselization” effort. Brusselization is “the indiscriminate and careless introduction of modern high-rise buildings into gentrified neighbourhoods” (Béghain and Gabilliet, 57). It’s a term now commonly used to describe haphazard urban development, like Brussels in the ‘60s and ‘70s when there weren’t enough zoning regulations and businesses were tearing down and rebuilding all over the city with little oversight.
Today, Maison du Peuple has been replaced by a concrete skyscraper, a sad end for the historic and culturally important building that touched so many lives. However, through images and writings, we can still use this building as an excellent example of combining form and function in ways that benefit the people and leave an impact on contemporary society and history.
Claire Harmon is a McConnell Scholar in the class of 2023. She is studying library science, art history, political science, and English at the University of Louisville.
Works Cited
Alekseeva, Elena V., and Elena Y. Kazakova-Apkarimova. “People’s Houses as Answers to the Challenges of Modernity in Europe and Russia.” RUDN Journal of Russian History 19, no. 4 (2020): 952–64. https://doi.org/10.22363/2312-
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Buzan, Barry, and George Lawson. 2013. “The Global Transformation: The Nineteenth Century and the Making of Modern International Relations.” International Studies Quarterly 57, no. 3 (September): 620-34.
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