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First Brussels Art Nouveau & Art Deco Festival adds 10 new buildings to its program

First Brussels Art Nouveau & Art Deco Festival adds 10 new buildings to its program

From 11 to 26 March 2017, the Brussels Art Nouveau & Art Deco (BANAD) Festival will add 10 new buildings to its program. The BANAD Festival is the successor to the Art Nouveau and Art Deco Biennial Event, and will continue to be the unmissable event for fans of these two architectural styles used for so many buildings in Brussels.

Over the three last weekends of March, the BANAD Festival will offer guided tours of around 50 exceptional interiors in the Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles – and still in daily use today. The program will feature ten new buildings, never before open to the public during the Biennial Events. Here is a list of them in the order of the dates when they will be open to the public.

On 11 and 12 March, you will be able to discover for the first time the house at 42 Rue Belle Vue in 1000 Brussels. It is the first of a group of three houses designed by Ernest Blérot, that the architect had built for himself between 1898 and 1899. Note that the owners will perform two private concerts for visitors. Five more new buildings are located in Ixelles. Contemporary Art Brussels (CAB) is a private exhibition space of 800m², opened in 2012 by art collector Hubert Bonnet in an Art Deco building near the Ixelles ponds. The Aimable Delune House, built by the architect in 1902-1903 as his own house, was listed in 2006. The townhouse at 123 Rue de l’Arbre Bénit was the home of architect Paul Saintenoy. In 1897, he renovated it in an eclectic style. It was purchased in 1956 by the Hungarian Catholic Mission, which still occupies the building. The Palais du Congo is an Art Deco apartment building designed and built in 1930 by the architect and property developer Jean-Florian Collin. The Watteyne House is a middle-class Art Nouveau townhouse with a remarkably asymmetric facade, designed by the architect Franz Tilley in 1901.

On 18 and 19 March, the BANAD Festival will reveal a new building in Saint-Gilles: the Pascal Polar Gallery, located in a five-story Art Deco building.

On 25 and 26 March, three other new buildings will reveal their interiors to the public. First, an Art Nouveau house designed by E. Van Lerberghe in Schaerbeek, with its typical wooden bay window on the facade. In Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, it is the Résidence Insula, a Modernist apartment building of 1935, whose architect Georges France was inspired by the style of the great ocean liners when he designed the front door and entrance hall. Our last new building will be the Résidence Palace, a luxury apartment building designed just after the First World War by the Swiss architect Michel Polak, and today home to the International Press Centre.

Also on the program are tours on foot, by bicycle and by coach (all led by professional guides). During the weekends and weeks that separate them, there will be concerts, exhibitions and other cultural events organized in collaboration with such well-known partners as the Flagey Arts Centre, the Queen Elisabeth Musical Chapel, the CIVA Foundation, the Réseau Art Nouveau Network (RANN) and the Artonov Festival.

In addition, the BANAD Festival will include for the first time a special family program. On Sunday 19 March, (grand-)parents and (grand-)children can take part in a treasure hunt and two special guided tours (one by bicycle and one on foot). Another new feature will be the opportunity for private groups to have their own guided tours of interiors on Fridays 17 and 24 March. Reservations can be made from now onwards via Explore Brussels.

Finally, the closing event of the BANAD Festival will be on Sunday 26 March: the Art Nouveau and Art Deco Collectors’ and Restorers’ Fair, which was a runaway success at the last Biennial Event. There will be demonstrations by expert artisans and free valuations of Art Nouveau and Art Deco objects and furniture by an expert from the Tajan auction house.

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