Ferdinand Van Mierlo

Ferdinand Van Mierlo, also known as Fernand, born in Borgerhout on 5 December 1890, was an architect active in Antwerp from shortly before the First World War until the late 1930s. A designer of townhouses, villas and apartment buildings, around 1925 he developed a personal Art Deco style, recognisable by the characteristic treatment of the stone elements, often with a dominant projecting bay rising over several storeys. He built or converted several cinemas: the Trianon, a theatre and cinema with café and dwelling (1921), which he himself altered in 1931, the Cine Agora in Hoboken (converted in 1927), the Roxy in Turnhout (1930) and the now-demolished Nova cinema in the Kiel district (1929), probably his most important work. In 1924 he designed the Jacobs building at De Beuckerstraat 20, whose façade he reworked and widened the following year for his own house at Kerkstraat 171, created by converting a neoclassical terraced house. Later came the apartment building with café on the corner of Van den Nestlei and Provinciestraat (1927-1928), the Van Dyck villa at Berkenlaan 25 (1928) and the Ronsse house at Van Loenoutstraat 26 (1931), in a geometric Art Deco.

Translated from the French original.