(b Brussels, 16 Nov 1852; d Brussels, 4 Jan 1942). Belgian architect. He studied at the Ecole du Génie Civil in Ghent and then from 1873 to 1879 at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. An important early influence was a period spent working with Henri Beyaert, with whom he collaborated closely, acquiring an astonishing virtuosity in the design of façades. The major part of his work, however, can be characterized as derived from Italian and Flemish Renaissance sources, although developed with a rationalist rigour given the limitations of party-wall construction and narrow plots of land with which he had to contend. After the early design for the Ecole Communale (1878–80), Place Anneessens, Brussels, he visited Italy and spent a few years in the early 1880s in Portugal. On his return to Brussels he specialized in designing middle-class homes, large houses for the wealthy, industrial buildings and exhibition halls. However, his outstanding work is the Hôtel Hannon (1902), Rue de la Jonction, Brussels, in which at the instigation of his friend the engineer and photographer Edouard Hannon (1853–1931), he experimented with Art Nouveau. The house was decorated and furnished by Emile Gallé, and forms one of the most beautiful corner buildings of its style in Brussels. Although very different from the rest of his work, it secured Brunfaut a reputation as an exponent of Art Nouveau. In 1885–90 he managed the important Belgian architectural review L’Emulation, and in 1887–8 he was president of the Société Centrale d’Architecture de Belgique.