About Alban Chambon

Alban Chambon was born in Varzy, France in 1847. He studied sculpture and decoration in Paris and moved to Brussels in 1868, where he opened his own ornamental sculpture and decorating firm (1876). As head of this increasingly successful enterprise, Chambon collaborated with some of the leading architects of Brussels in the 1880s and 1890s and thus participated in both the design and construction of many prominent projects. Among them was a series of theatre interiors in Brussels and Amsterdam on which he worked with the architects W. Kuhnen, Albert Dumont and Charles Gys, for example the Theatre de la Bourse (1885-8; destr.), Brussels. These apparently won him the attention of important architects and clients abroad, notably in England where he did some design work with the architects Charles John Phipps and Walter Emden. In 1896 Chambon assumed the title of architect and considerably enlarged the scope of his practice to include remodelling work and urban planning projects as well as architectural design. He was among the designers most responsible for the development of Ostend and Westende into important Belgian seaside resorts; his work at Ostend included the remodelling of the Casino-Kursaal (1898-1906) and Spa Casino (1903-9), both later rebuilt but eventually destroyed. In his later career he collaborated regularly with his sons Fernand Chambon, Gaston Chambon and Alfred Chambon, also designers. Almost nothing remains of his best work of the 1880s and 1890s, although its character may be judged by his surviving interiors on the ground floor of the Hotel Metropole (1893-6; with Gedeon Bordiau), Place de Brouckere, Brussels. Such extraordinarily rich, exotic, outlandishly eclectic yet not historicizing creations for Belgium's high society have been seen as direct precursors of Belgian Art Nouveau architecture. Chambon died in Brussels in 1928.