Horta's father died in 1880, and Horta returned to Belgium. He moved to Brussels and married his first wife, with whom he later fathered two daughters. He began to study architecture at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. He became friends with Paul Hankar, another early pioneer of Art Nouveau architecture. Horta did well in his studies and was taken on as an assistant by his professor Alphonse Balat, architect to Leopold II of Belgium. Horta worked with Balet on the construction of the Greenhouses of Laeken, Horta's first work to utilise glass and iron. In 1884, Horta won the first Prix Godecharle to be awarded for Architecture for a proposed new building for the Belgian Parliament. On his graduation from the Royal Academy, he was awarded the Grand Prize in architecture.