House and studio of the sculptor Fernand Dubois

Victor Horta was the architect of this house and studio on avenue Brugmann in Forest, built between 1901 and 1903. It belongs to a remarkable row of buildings running from no. 58 to no. 94.

The sculptor Fernand Dubois (1861-1939), who commissioned it, was also an engraver and a Symbolist medallist. A pupil of Charles Van der Stappen, he had worked with him on the decoration of the salon of the Hôtel Tassel, which Horta had built in 1893. The brief for the house answered the wishes of a client who lived simply and had modest means: a plain building combining a family home and an artist's studio.

In 1961 the architect Jean Delhaye, by then the owner, altered the interior, mostly on the studio side. In the basement he installed a boiler room, toilets and kitchens; on the ground floor he made a garage in the entrance and put toilets and a kitchen in the former sewing workshop; he added false ceilings on the first floor and made changes to the staircases.

The house has been listed since 20 July 1972.

The façade, clad in blue stone and in white Euville and Savonnières stone, plays on asymmetry: three bays of unequal width on staggered levels, the central entrance bay being the narrowest. The openings vary in shape and size, most of them under a basket-handle arch.

On the ground floor, the door to the living quarters opens under a basket-handle arch with a triple archivolt whose extrados is slightly pointed; Dubois himself designed the handle, with its plant motifs, and the doorbell. To the right, the carriage entrance leads to the studio; to its left, two narrow barred windows sit above two small cellar windows.

On the first floor, the left-hand bay has a French window opening onto a balcony whose stone cheeks enclose a wrought-iron grille. On the right, the immense window originally lit the sculptor's studio, which took up the whole right-hand part of the house. On the second floor, the side bays have windows with cast-iron colonnettes and wrought-iron balustrades in an Art Nouveau pattern. In the centre, two paired windows with a stone mullion are stacked one above the other: the raking arches of one turn outwards (the "butterfly"), those of the other inwards. Ribbons decorate the sill panels.

The original plan was organised around the studio, the central room. The studio had its own entrance, leading to a waiting room for Dubois's clients; at the back, a drawing studio overlooked the sewing area. On this side the first floor was left empty to give height to the casting studio on the mezzanine and to the sculpture studio above it, which the large glazed window lit from the façade.

The living quarters took up the left-hand part: kitchens, dining room and sitting room on the ground floor, a playroom and second sitting room on the first, bedrooms and bathrooms across the whole of the second. The two functions were separate, but Dubois wanted them to remain closely intertwined: they were linked by two connecting staircases at the heart of the building, lit from the façade by the windows above the private front door.

The building is today home to the Embassy of Cuba in Belgium.

The building, occupied by the Embassy of Cuba, can be seen from the street, at 80 avenue Brugmann. It is one of the stops on an Art Nouveau and Art Deco architecture walk offered by visit.brussels.