Stoclet Palace

Belgium, Belgium

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The Stoclet Palace (Palais Stoclet, Stocletpaleis) is a private mansion in the Woluwe‑Saint‑Pierre municipality of Brussels, Belgium, built between 1905 and 1911 on the Avenue de Tervueren for the Belgian banker and art collector Adolphe Stoclet, and designed by the Austrian architect Josef Hoffmann of the Wiener Werkstätte in the Vienna Secession style, which is an Austrian variant of Art Nouveau. It is considered Hoffmann’s masterpiece and one of the most refined and luxurious private houses of the 20th century, noted for its radical geometric design, white marble cladding with golden framing, a distinctive tower crowned by four copper figures by Franz Metzner, and a total integration of architecture, art and craft that makes it a classic example of a Gesamtkunstwerk or “total work of art”. The interiors once contained high‑profile artworks commissioned by the client, including by Gustav Klimt, who created wall friezes for the dining room that are now part of the museum collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, while other decorative elements such as mosaic walls, bespoke furniture, lighting and metalwork were designed and made by Wiener Werkstätte artisans to match Hoffmann’s strict geometric lines and flat roof, which contrast sharply with the gables and mansards typical of the period and already point towards modernism and Art Deco. From 2009 the palace has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site as a masterpiece of the creative genius of the Viennese Secession and as a symbol of constructive and aesthetic modernity in the West at the beginning of the 20th century that had a considerable influence on the birth of Art Deco.