Maison Pirnay - Rue Dartois 44,

Maison Pirnay Rue Dartois 44, Liège, Belgium
Built 1907-1911 - Clément Pirnay architect

"The house that you built for yourself testifies to an effort of sincerity and artistic loyalty that I take highly", wrote, in 1912, Victor Horta in a letter of support to Clément Pirnay for the grant a building permit. The ground floor houses a cloakroom, hall and secretariat, extending over 25 m by the architectural workshop – which will accommodate up to fourteen people – the garage and access to the photography studio in the basement.

The floors are reserved to the home of the architect and his family, served by a central staircase whose metal guardrail – like that of the finely intertwined windows of the front door, a motif subsequently repeated in other projects – shares the essential design of the Viennese Secession, in particular that of the joinery of the Savings Bank in Vienna by Otto Wagner (1906).

If the flat roof and the thin structural beams are made of reinforced concrete, under a combination of bricks and blue stone on the building facade reveals traditional masonry. The abundance of sculpted motifs is exceptional in the repertoire of the architect, who generally ignores them: compass and square illustrating the profession of the sponsor, winged sphinxes (loggia), cats on the lookout for lizards (terrace), wreaths of flowers at the top.

“With this architect, we return to the distinctly modern, somewhat crazy idea,” writes Paul Jaspar, whose architectural studio Pirnay joined in 1898 before becoming office manager. “Let us cite his house on rue Dartois: an apartment building, with all the desirable comforts: elevator, central heating, gardens on various floors.

He is also particularly amazed by the idea of the layered house, with hanging gardens. » Jaspar here alludes to the transformation of 1927, raising the house by two floors. The E.G.A.U. Group, the main player in post-war architecture in Liège, set up its offices there in 1948. The building was narrowly saved from demolition, along with the Comptoir d'Outre mer, at the end of the 1980s.