Jean Prouvé’s pre-fab masterpieces: The mass housing that never was

Franz Kafka. Galileo Galilei. Vincent van Gogh. Why is it that the true value of so many visionaries is only recognized after their death? Though he was far from a failure – he had a large, cutting-edge factory and won several architecture prizes during his lifetime – the pioneering pre-fab housing of French designer Jean Prouvé has only become sought-after in the past decade.

The same can be said of his modernist furniture. His university canteen chairs were once snapped up for a bargain at flea markets, but last year his Trapeze refectory table sold for a record $1.3 million at a Paris auction.

Housing crisis

After the Second World War, there was a dire need for cheap, quick-to-produce housing. Bombing had destroyed millions of homes – in France, 1,836 municipalities were officially declared war damaged, some 18% of all buildings.

Jean Prouvé thought he had a solution. A son of one of the founders of Ecole de Nancy – France’s Art Nouveau hub – he grew up with the school’s central ethos: to grow links between art and industry, and make art accessible to all.

Jean Prouvé, decorative metal worker by trade, began experimenting with architecture in the early 1930s. By the end of the decade, he had patented the "axial portal frame", a two-legged load-bearing structure that supported all of his subsequent pre-fab housing designs.

By 1947, Prouvé had conceived this modular steel and wood house, intended as a solution to France's urgent postwar housing needs.

The self-taught architect was inspired by buildings that left no trace on their environment. His modular houses had no foundations and could be assembled by hand over a few days.

The pre-fab concept failed to take off, and Prouvé's model at his Maxeville furniture factory instead became his design studio.

Prouvé was nevertheless a highly successful architect, winning a prize for Rotterdam's Faculty of Medicine's facade and presiding over the design jury for Paris' acclaimed Centre Pompidou.

This 1956 commission for a lightweight and moveable school complex in Villejuif, Paris, used sheet steel props to support a curved, cantilevered, laminated wood roof.

The school's glazed facade, which gave it the look of an open-air space, was punctuated with sheet steel sections that served both as stiffeners and ventilation devices. French gallery owner Patrick Seguin has been collecting the few surviving Prouvé pre-fabs over the past 25 years.

In 2013, Seguin put on an exhibition in Turin, entitled "A Passion for Jean Prouvé" in Turin. This 8-by-12 meter aluminum and wood "Metropole" house, designed circa. 1949, was rebuilt on the test track atop the old Fiat Lingotto factory.

Jean Prouvé's modernist masterpieces

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Trained as a decorative metal worker, Prouvé progressed to making utilitarian furniture out of smooth metal plates for schools, universities, canteens. Before long, he was experimenting with architecture. To him there was “no difference between the structure of a building and the structure of a table,” his grandson told Dwell in 2014.

In 1947, Prouvé conceived his first “demountable house,” a 10-by-12 meter steel and wood unit. With no foundations, the dwelling was assembled by hand and supported by a two-legged structure he called the “axial portal frame”, which he patented and used in all his subsequent modular housing.

Phenomenal failures

Prouvé’s unit was built at the entrance of his Maxeville furniture factory near Nancy in northeastern France. The goal was to spark interest in mass-produced housing that could meet the era’s housing needs. But that didn’t happen.

“They never liked it. They never liked it in the 60s, in the 70s, in the 80s,” said French gallery owner Patrick Seguin, who has dedicated the last 25 years to promoting Prouvé.

After a fallout with his factory’s major shareholder, Prouvé left the business and all of his remaining units were destroyed or dismantled. Prouvé’s Maison Tropicale, a modular aluminum house designed to address building shortages in French colonial West Africa, was also a flop, with only three ever constructed.

However, in 2007, a Maison Tropicale was displayed outside galleries in Paris, London and New York, where it was described by art critics as a “modernist masterpiece” and auctioned for a record $5 million.

Preserving Prouvé

Twenty five years ago, Seguin began doggedly acquiring any surviving Prouvé units, which he has sold to wealthy collectors as installation art. He recently got his hands on the only remaining model in Nancy, Prouvé’s design office, which was so undervalued it had been covered in an aluminum shell and converted into a swingers club.

Seguin and his team are bringing the Lovingly restored Maxeville Design Office to this year’s edition of DesignMiami/Basel.

Long seen as cheap or poorly constructed, pre-fab housing is now considered by many to be an efficient solution to 21st century housing and climate crises, with Prouvé’s innovative early examples serving as leading inspiration.

“This is their second chance,” said Seguin.