Site Victor Horta, Public hospital in Laeken, Belgium
The site Victor Horta is the Laeken campus of the CHU Brugmann, at Place Van Gehuchten 4, built by Victor Horta from 1906 and inaugurated on 18 June 1923. Its roughly 700 beds are laid out horizontally in separate pavilions on an 18-hectare grounds, a layout Horta defended against the vertical scheme favoured by the medical faculty. The buildings are arranged symmetrically by function, and the gaps left when pavilions were cut from the plans were later filled, for instance by Henry Lacoste's Fondation médicale Reine Élisabeth of 1933.
The campus was built in the 1920s as a hospital, with Victor Horta involved in the design of its early buildings. Over the following decades, it grew into one of the main healthcare sites in northern Brussels.
The campus is named Site Horta after Victor Horta, who was commissioned in 1906 at the urging of his friends Maurice Frison and Max Hellet, members of the Conseil Général. The brick building behind the stone monument carries large metal letters reading "SITE" and "HORTA". The monument shows a bust of a bearded man above a hooded woman and a kneeling figure with a round shield.
The site is a working hospital campus, so movement is organised around the medical buildings rather than a visitor route. The pavilions are spread over 18 hectares, with the Fondation médicale Reine Élisabeth, completed by Henry Lacoste in 1933, among the later buildings. Access is via Place Van Gehuchten 4 in Laeken.
Victor Horta is best known for private homes in the Art Nouveau style, so a medical campus bearing his name and reflecting his design approach is quite unusual. It stands as one of the few examples where his work extends into large-scale public health infrastructure.
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