Hankar House, Art Nouveau residence in Saint-Gilles, Belgium.
Hankar House is an Art Nouveau townhouse at 71 Rue Defacqz in the Saint-Gilles district of Brussels. The front facade is built in red brick with blue stone details and decorated with sgraffito panels beneath the windows.
Paul Hankar designed this house in 1893 as his own residence, the same year Victor Horta completed Hotel Tassel. Both buildings are seen as starting points for Belgian Art Nouveau.
The sgraffito decorations on the facade depict natural forms and representations of daylight hours, embodying morning, afternoon, evening, and night. These artistic elements shape the house's character and speak to the creative vision of its era.
The house sits in a residential area that also contains other Art Nouveau buildings, so walking the surrounding streets makes for a rewarding visit. The facade details are easiest to read in natural daylight.
The sgraffito panels on the facade do not show random motifs but represent the four parts of the day: morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Hankar commissioned them from the artist Adolphe Crespin, who also worked on other Art Nouveau buildings in Brussels.
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