On 12 February 1874, a plaque reads, the French architect August Perret was born in a corner house in Ixelles’ Rue Keyenveld. His father was a political refugee who had fled to Brussels after the Paris Commune was crushed.
The young Perret was seven when the family moved back to Paris. He went on to study classical architecture before joining his father’s stonemasonry workshop.
Perrot became the first architect to use the revolutionary technique of reinforced concrete. His most important project was the postwar reconstruction of the bombed French city of Le Havre.
On 24 March 1950, the Belgian Association of Urbanists and Modernist Architects gathered in Rue Keyenveld to place a marble plaque on August Perret’s birthplace.
Derek Blyth’s hidden secret of the day: Derek Blyth is the author of the bestselling “The 500 Hidden Secrets of Belgium”. He picks out one of his favourite hidden secrets for The Brussels Times every day.
