The Villa Empain is a former private residence in

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

, Belgium, which currently serves as a

cultural centre A cultural center or cultural centre is an organization, building or complex that promotes culture and arts. Cultural centers can be neighborhood community arts organizations, private facilities, government-sponsored, or activist-run. Asia * Ce ...

and exhibition space. Built in 1930–1934 in

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unit ...

style by the Swiss-Belgian architect , the villa was commissioned by Baron

Louis Empain Baron Louis Empain, originally Louis Becker (1908—1976) was a Belgian financier. Louis was born in Brussels on 3 January 1908, the youngest son of Édouard Empain, by his mistress Jeanne Becker, a musician. When his mother became Empain's wife ...

, son of the industrialist

Édouard Empain Édouard Louis Joseph, 1st Baron Empain (20 September 1852 – 22 July 1929), was a wealthy Walloon Belgian engineer, entrepreneur, financier and industrialist, as well as an amateur Egyptologist. During World War I he became a known Major Gener ...

. It subsequently served as offices and an embassy before falling into disuse. After a restoration from 2009 to 2011, it was opened to the public by the Boghossian Foundation.

History

Design and construction

Baron

(1908–1976) was the second son of

(1852–1929), a respected Belgian industrialist who had spent much of his career in

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...

. In 1930, Louis commissioned the Swiss-Belgian architect to build a large house in

style on the edge of the

Bois de la Cambre/Ter Kamerenbos The () or ( Dutch) is an urban public park in Brussels, Belgium. It lies in the south of the Brussels-Capital Region, in the municipality of the City of Brussels, and covers an area of , forming a natural offshoot of the Sonian Forest, whic ...

, in the emerging southern suburbs of

, on what was then known as the / (now the Avenue Franklin Roosevelt/Franklin Rooseveltlaan). Built between 1930 and 1934, the Villa Empain is organised around a large enclosed courtyard. It was designed in Art Deco style, and the project aroused significant interest in Belgium where prestigious houses in the style were comparatively rare. Various expensive stone facings were used from around the world.

Later history

Despite the expense incurred in construction, Louis Empain barely used the house after its completion and lived primarily in Canada. In 1937, it was donated to the Belgian State to house a museum of

applied arts The applied arts are all the arts that apply design and decoration to everyday and essentially practical objects in order to make them aesthetically pleasing."Applied art" in ''The Oxford Dictionary of Art''. Online edition. Oxford Univers ...

for the École nationale supérieure d'Architecture et des Arts décoratifs de La Cambre. It was requisitioned by the

German Army The German Army (, "army") is the land component of the armed forces of Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German ''Bundeswehr'' together with the ''Marine'' (German Navy) and the ''Luftwaf ...

in November 1943 during

the occupation ''The Occupation'' is a single-player adventure video game developed by White Paper Games and released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows on 5 March 2019. The game takes place in a single government building, in real-time over fou ...

. After the war, the Villa Empain was ceded to the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

as an

embassy A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state. In practice, the phrase usually den ...

at the initiative of

Paul-Henri Spaak Paul-Henri Charles Spaak (; 25 January 1899 – 31 July 1972) was an influential Belgian Socialist politician, diplomat and statesman. Along with Robert Schuman, Alcide De Gasperi and Konrad Adenauer he was a leader in the formation of the ...

. Disapproving of this use, it was reacquired by the Empain family in 1963 and resold in 1973 to Harry Tcherkezian, an

Armenian-American Armenian Americans ( hy, ամերիկահայեր, ''amerikahayer'') are citizens or residents of the United States who have total or partial Armenians, Armenian ancestry. They form the second largest community of the Armenian diaspora after A ...

tobacco entrepreneur. It was used by Radio-Télévision-Luxembourg (RTL) from 1980 to 1993, before becoming unoccupied after 1995. The building was classified in 2007, but its condition degraded significantly. In 2007, the Villa Empain was acquired by the Boghossian Foundation. It was restored between 2009 and 2010 and reopened to the public as a museum and

. The conservation project was awarded the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Award in 2011. File:Villa Empain.jpg, Rear of the Villa Empain, showing the large original swimming pool File:Entrance Villa Empain Brussels.jpg, Entrance File:Hall de la Villa Empain - avenue Roosevelt - panoramio.jpg, Main hall

Exhibitions

* Colors of the Orient, Arts and lifestyles in the Ottoman Empire (2010) * Of women's modesty and anger (2011) * A dream of eternity. The long road of Oriental arts (2011) * Art is the answer! Contemporary Lebanese artists and designers (2012) * Edouard and Cleopatra. Egyptomania's from the XIXth century (2012) * Turbulences II (2013) * Abandoned Dwellings of Beirut by

Gregory Buchakjian Gregory Buchakjian (born 1971, in Beirut, Lebanon) is a Lebanese photographer, filmmaker and art historian. He studied at the Paris-Sorbonne University. He is the director of the School of Visual Arts at Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts ALBA an ...

(2019)

References

Notes

External links

Website of Villa Empain
{{DEFAULTSORT:Empain, Villa Museums in Brussels Houses in Belgium Art Deco architecture in Belgium Buildings and structures in Brussels Barons Empain Protected heritage sites in Brussels