43. La Maison des Terrasses

A Belgian architect with a multidisciplinary background in architecture, painting and sculpture, Raphaël Delville – who served as an apprentice to Victor Horta and worked alongside Le Corbusier – did not produce a vast body of work, but he left behind a body of work characterised by great formal coherence. His iconic work, the Maison des Terrasses in Uccle, designed in 1935, masterfully synthesises the principles of European modernism, whilst adapting them to a domestic scale and the urban context of Brussels. With its clear, sculptural volumetric composition, its emphasised rounded horizontal lines and its ribbon windows, the integration of large terraces and a rooftop solarium designed as genuine living spaces, this is a perfect example of the so-called
‘ocean liner’ aesthetic, characteristic of 1930s modernism.