Alfons Van Braekel

Alfons Van Braekel, born in Antwerp on 4 November 1890 and died in Berchem on 3 December 1959, was an architect active from 1912 until his death, designing houses, multi-family dwellings and apartment buildings. In the early 1920s he stood out both for designs influenced by the brick expressionism of the Amsterdam School and for a French-oriented Art Deco. The first strand shows in the De Nève and Jensen houses at Kruishofstraat 219-221 (1922), the second in the stone-fronted Helsmoortel house at Jan Van Rijswijcklaan 118 (1922). In 1921 he and Jacques De Weerdt signed the ensemble at Berkenlaan 57-61, one of the few joint projects of the two architects, whose design is probably his. In 1927 he designed his own house at Generaal Van Merlenstraat 21 in Zurenborg, in a sober Art Deco, conceived as a 'double house' with a separate rental flat on the second floor. In the 1930s his architecture moved between a functional Art Deco and a restrained modernism, as in the Lestienne multi-family house (1933-1934) in the Tentoonstellingswijk, while the Naveau-Aldernaght house and studio (1933), built for the painter and engraver Maria Aldernagt, still shows Amsterdam School features. His most important interwar work is the apartment and shop building of the Etablissements Carlier (1935), on the corner of Meirbrug and Schoenmarkt, opposite the Boerentoren.

Translated from the French original.