Castel Béranger

The Castel Béranger is a residential building with twenty-six apartments located at 14 rue de la Fontaine in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. It was designed by the architect Hector Guimard, and built between 1895 and 1898. It was the first residence in Paris built in the style known as Art Nouveau.

Architect Hector Guimard (1867-1942) was born in Lyon and attended the School of Decorative Arts and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He was in charge of the construction of the Pavilion of Electricity at the 1889 Paris International Exposition, and between 1891 and 1893 he built several private houses and a school in Paris, all in the traditional styles.

In 1894, at the age of twenty-seven, Guimard traveled to England and to Belgium, where he met the Belgian architect Victor Horta, and saw the Hotel Tassel which Horta had built in 1893-94 in what later became known as the Art Nouveau style. It was inspired not by classical models but by nature, particularly by the curving stems of plants and flowers. Horta also stressed to Guimard the importance of unity in a building; the structure, decoration, furniture, wallpaper, carpets and decoration should all go together.

Guimard had undertaken the project of designing an apartment building in a traditional style for a widow named Madame Fournier before he went to Brussels and met Horta. When he returned, her persuaded his client to allow him to build the structure in the new style. He began designing the Castel Béranger in 1895, Guimard became involved in every detail of the project, designing the furniture, ornamental ironwork, carpets, glass, wall paper, door locks and doorknobs.

Guimard did not forget his debt to Horta; when the building was done, Guimard sent him an album of the designs of the building with the inscription, “to an eminent master and friend, Victor Horta, affectionate homage from an admirer.”

Describing the Castel Béranger, the architectural historian and critic Simon Texier wrote: “The Art Nouveau had as its characteristic trait a naturalist approach, which made a building or a simple object into a work which was at the same time complex, in motion, and unified by its lines.”

There were many elements of the new building that were neo-Gothic, though Guimard’s interpretation was very far from the pure Thirteenth century style advocated by Viollet-le-Duc. It was suggested by the name Castel, rather than Hotel, and by its modern version of ‘’echauguettes” the overhanging turrets that were a feature on the corners of medieval castles.

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Wikipedia