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(b Puławy, June 1756; d Florence, Feb 8, 1841).

Polish architect and writer, also active in Italy. He probably studied in Rome in the late 1770s and returned to Italy in 1785–6 under the aegis of Stanisław Kostka Potocki, a collector and amateur architect with whom he collaborated throughout his life. In 1786 Aigner and Potocki refronted the church of St Anna, Warsaw, using a giant composite order on high pedestals. The political turmoil of the 1790s disrupted Aigner’s career, but during his second phase of creativity (1797–1816) he won fame through his work on the great estate of the Czartoryski family at Puławy, on the Vistula west of Lublin, the most important centre of cultural life in Poland during the Enlightenment. Aigner had already erected the Marynka Palace there in 1790, a variation on the Petit Trianon at Versailles, France, and from 1798 he began to add ornamental buildings to go with the new Picturesque layout of the Puławy gardens: a Chinese pavilion, a Gothick house and a peripheral Temple of the Sibyl with a shallow dome. In ...

(b Feluy, Jan 10, 1849; d Ghent, Jan 11, 1920).

Belgian architect and writer. He trained as a civil engineer under Adolphe Pauli at the Ecole Spéciale de Génie Civil of the State University of Ghent. As a student he came into contact with the Belgian Gothic Revival movement centred on Jean-Baptiste Bethune and the St Luke School in Ghent, founded by Bethune in 1862. From 1874 Cloquet worked with the publishers Desclée. His early architectural work was similar to that of Bethune, Joris Helleputte and the first generation of St Luke architects. His most important projects were built around the turn of the century: the University Institutes (1896–1905), Ghent, and the Central Post Office (1897–1908), Ghent, the latter with Etienne Mortier (1857–1934), a pupil of Helleputte. In them Cloquet adopted a more eclectic though still predominantly medieval style, also introducing Renaissance motifs. Between 1904 and 1911 he designed a redevelopment plan for the historic centre of Ghent, between the early 14th-century belfry and the 15th-century church of St Michael, known as the Kuip, which was realized before the Ghent World Fair of ...

[Georges]

(b Ghent, Aug 31, 1852; d Leuven, Feb 22, 1925).

Belgian architect and politician. In 1873 he obtained his diploma in civil engineering at the Ecole Spéciale de Génie Civil of the State University of Ghent. In 1874 he was appointed assistant professor and from 1878 to 1907 was full professor at the Catholic University of Leuven (Ecoles Spéciales de Génie Civil, des Arts et des Manufactures et des Mines), where he developed a training programme in architectural engineering. While a student he met Louis Cloquet and was influenced by the Belgian Gothic Revival movement, which was founded by Jean-Baptiste Bethune, also the founder (in 1862) of the St Luke School, Ghent. Helleputte’s architecture is similar to that of the first generation of St Luke architects in its almost undecorated and rather stern style. Its formal characteristics, modelled on the local Late Gothic style and traditional brick and limestone architecture, are strictly determined by constructional and functional needs. His most important works were built in Leuven for the Catholic University: the Anatomy Theatre (...

(b Nieuwpoort, Jan 3, 1786; d Ghent, April 5, 1864).

Belgian architect. He was the son of a carpenter; from 1803 he trained at the Academie voor Schone Kunsten in Ghent, where he was awarded a first prize in 1808. He went to Paris, where he worked in the important studio of Charles Percier(-Bassant) and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine. Together with L. Renard, Tieleman-Frans Suys and others, he contributed to the Choix des plus célèbres maisons de plaisance de Rome et de ses environs (1809–12), with drawings by Fontaine and Percier. In 1811 he won the Prix de Rome but did not go to Italy for health reasons. The fall of the Empire brought him back to Belgium in 1815, and he was appointed City Architect and professor at the Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Antwerp. His entry for a competition in London to make a monument commemorating the Battle of Waterloo, and above all his design (1816) for the auditorium of Ghent University, instantly established his reputation. He returned to Ghent, where he held the post of City Architect from ...