Jules Brunfaut

Jules Brunfaut (Brussels, 16 November 1852 – 4 January 1942) was a Belgian architect and engineer who worked around the turn of the twentieth century. He is best known perhaps for the Hôtel Hannon, a residence for photographer and engineer Édouard Hannon, which is, ironically, his only building designed in the Art Nouveau style.

Biography "Cemana", a duplex villa in Knokke-Heist, Belgium, designed by Jules Brunfaut. The Hôtel Hannon, in Saint-Gilles (Brussels), is Brunfaut's most famous work. Jules Brunfaut was born in Brussels on 16 November 1852. The descendant of a Walloon family originating in Tournai and based in Ypres, he completed high school at the Royal Athénée in Brussels. Brunfaut then followed the courses of the School of Civil Engineering of the University of Ghent.

Afterwards, he moved to Brussels. While following the courses of Félix Laureys (1820–1897) at the Academy of Fine Arts from 1873 to 1879, he completed four years of professional practice with the architect Henri Beyaert, one of the leading eclectic designers in Belgium, of whom he wrote a biographical sketch in 1908.

Upon his return to Brussels, Brunfaut received numerous commissions for bourgeois houses, mansions, castles, villas, utility buildings, industrial buildings for Solvay factories, and exhibition pavilions in Belgium and abroad from 1880 to 1919.

Brunfaut closed his office about 1920 in order to travel with his wife, Victorine Castaigne (1867–1930), along with his three daughters, and to devote himself to his writings and at the meetings of the commissions of which he was a member. Brunfaut died in his mansion on the avenue Molière in Brussels, after a prolonged illness on 4 January 1942.

He was a member of the Académie royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique, Fine Arts Class.