Aubecq 3.0: Victor Horta’s Hôtel Aubecq façade — Constructiv campus, Berchem-Sainte-Agathe, Brussels, from 7 November 2026

From 7 November 2026 the surviving façade of the Hôtel Aubecq, the town house Victor Horta built in 1902 for the industrialist Octave Aubecq on Avenue Louise, is open to the public again in a new permanent space on the Constructiv campus in Berchem-Sainte-Agathe, Brussels. Some 600 sculpted stones have been laid out horizontally rather than rebuilt upright, so that visitors walk through the façade itself; a platform gives a view over the whole composition before the path winds between the stones, and an opening has been left where the balcony slabs once stood, exposing what normally lies behind the decoration: the stone-cutting, the anchoring systems and the carved detail that cannot be seen from a street.

The house was sold in 1948 and demolished in 1950 to make way for an apartment block. Part of the façade, mainly in Walloon blue stone with grey and red granite, was dismantled and saved through the intervention of the public authorities and of Jean Delhaye, Horta’s long-time collaborator, and the stones then passed from depot to warehouse for decades. The Brussels-Capital Region became their owner in 2001. The project now called Aubecq 3.0 is a public-private partnership between urban.brussels, the regional heritage administration, and Constructiv, the Belgian construction sector’s training fund, which hosts the remains free of charge within its future centre of excellence for building trades. The stones were set out by the journeyman stonemason Cyrille Berard under the supervision of the architecture office Fast & Forward. The opening was announced on 20 October 2026 by Minister-President Boris Dilliès and Ans Persoons, Brussels State Secretary for Heritage, who restated the ambition of one day rebuilding the façade vertically in the city.

For two years the space offers a programme of guided tours and educational activities on the history of the house and its façade. Individual visitors join guided tours on fixed dates; groups, associations and schools book a tailored visit through Arkadia and Korei, two organisations specialised in heritage and architecture mediation; pupils and teachers from Brussels schools have free access to the activities of the Classes du Patrimoine. The site also serves as teaching material for the trainees of Construcity.brussels, who can study conservation and restoration on a Horta façade at arm’s length.

Practical details

• Opens: 7 November 2026, for at least two years
• Where: Constructiv campus, Rue du Zénith 15, 1082 Berchem-Sainte-Agathe, Brussels, Belgium
• Access: guided tours on fixed dates, by reservation; group, association and school visits by booking
• Organised by: urban.brussels and Constructiv
• Reservations: hotelaubecq.be

Cultural Heritage Online lists this opening because it returns to public view a major Art Nouveau façade that Brussels lost seventy-five years ago, and because it does so in a way that teaches the trades needed to keep such buildings standing.