Villa Saint-Cyr is a flamboyant and baroque Art Nouveau style mansion built for the painter Georges Léonard de Saint-Cyr in 1903 by the Belgian architect Gustave Strauven (1878-1919). It is situated at 11, Square Ambiorix and is said to be the most deviating Art Nouveau creation in Brussels. Strauven was a disciple of Victor Horta between the age of 18 and 20 and all of his works were realized between the age of 20 and 40, when he died. He was one of the most important representatives of the second generation of Art Nouveau in Brussels. Contrary to Horta, Strauven worked for the middle-class society and therefore emphasized more on the façade decoration than on the revolution of the habitation itself. The houses constructed by Strauven were lacking expensive materials compared to the Horta houses: he often used cheaper industrial products such as bricks and ironworks. Strauven built houses close to the Squares Ambiorix and Gutenberg and the Chaussée de Louvain, followed later by buildings in the Schaerbeek district, where the Community Council undertook the construction or renovation of social habitations. Gustave Strauven has invented several new construction techniques and even a one-wheel vehicle. Certain critiques not too much open to his artistic or ideological innovations qualified the building as "epileptic macaroni", showing the modernity of the Maison Saint-Cyr in its time. Strauven's architecture marked the beginning of Art Nouveau's assimilation to socialism or the "anarcho-syndicalism", contrasting with the conservatism of the bourgeoisie. The Maison Saint-Cyr is now a classified building. The owners of the house, Mr. and Mrs. Changy decided to sell the house in 2006 to Movast, an Antwerpen company specialized in real estates of exception, since the renovation would have cost more than its purchase price (approx. 750 000 Euros) and the Brussels Region was only ready to finance the partial renovation of the façade, which was particularly unstable. Movast intends to renovate the house in its original style and to host offices in it, but the opening of an art gallery is not excluded either.

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