When Horta's father died in 1880, he returned to Belgium and moved to Brussels. He married his first wife. He studied architecture at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. In Brussels Horta made a friendship with Paul Hankar. He became an assistant for his professor Alphonse Balat, architect to Leopold II of Belgium. Together they designed the royal Greenhouses of Laeken, Horta's first work to use glass and iron.