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The Wielemans brewing family ordered this 1926 art deco mansion after a holiday in Andalucía. The architect, Adrien Blomme, also updated the Métropole hotel for them, built the cinema behind it, Aux Armes des Brasseurs and of course their brewery, now the Wiels centre in Forest.
The interior patio may have seemed like a good idea after a few manzanillas in the sun but must have been freezing in Brussels. At least they had free beer.
Architect Adrien Blomme was always connected. He started out building mansions for the rich and the Hôtel de la Cour d'Autriche backing onto the tracks at Midi. Decades later, Adrien would design the new Gare du Midi. Later still, Paul Gerardi would hole up here in Salamander.
Adrien then takes an interest in Ukrainian miners housing and healthier homes. He visits Letchworth garden city in 1912 and meets Richard Parker and Raymond Unwin. The three of them design a bizarre arts et crafts mansion in Ixelles. It's still there, hidden behind ave Molière.
As Adrien is finishing the hobbit mansion in 1913, arch rivals Antoine Pompe and Fernand Bodson are inventing modernism opposite its driveway. Before the gauntlet can be picked up, war starts and they're all in exile, drinking at the Arts Club in Mayfair and designing the future.
Before London, at the age of 35, Adrien had built himself this flabby, proto-McMansion (L) by the lakes in Ixelles (now Swedish embassy). He returned to Brussels suffering depression and moves round the corner to a silly house by another architect (R). Now a club échangiste.
In 1928, at the age of 50 and flush with beer money, Adrien & architect pals Alexis Dumont & Horta bully Brussels City into giving permission for this huge modernist house on ave Roosevelt. Centre, a panel by Oscar Zadkine appears to depict the future Wiels brewery (1932) right.
