Jean Prouvé

Jean Prouvé (8 April 1901 – 23 March 1984) was a French metal worker, self-taught architect and designer.

Le Corbusier designated Prouvé a constructeur, blending architecture and engineering.

Prouvé's main achievement was transferring manufacturing technology from industry to architecture, without losing aesthetic qualities.

His design skills were not limited to one discipline.

During his career Jean Prouvé was involved in architectural design, industrial design, structural design and furniture design.

Prouvé was born in Nancy, France, the second of seven children of the artist Victor Prouvé and the pianist Marie Duhamel.

The Prouvés belonged to a lively artistic circle, which included the glass artist Emile Gallé, and the furniture designer Louis Majorelle.

Jean grew up surrounded by the ideals and energy of the École de Nancy, the art collective to which his father belonged.

Its goals were to make art readily accessible, to forge links between art and industry, as well as between art and social consciousness.

Their tenets became ultimately a powerful influence on his body of work.

"I was raised," Prouvé says, "in a world of artists and scholars, a world which nourished my mind."

Between 1914 and 1917, Jean Prouvé spent three years in the school of fine arts of Nancy.

Then, he was first apprenticed to a blacksmith, Émile Robert in Enghien (near Paris), and then to the parisian metal workshop of Aldabert Szabo.

In Nancy in 1923 he opened what would be the first in a string of his own workshops and studios.

As a craftsman in wrought iron, he was commissioned between 1923 and 1939 by local architects as Jean Bourgon, Pierre Le Bourgeois, Raphaël Oudeville or Alfred Thomas to contribute to their Art deco projects.

He abandoned gradually the decorative style of that time to prefer smooth surfaces of folded metal plates.

Jean Prouvé was also involved in the activity of the Comité Nancy-Paris between 1923 and 1927 with the architect Jacques André or the painter Etienne Cournault.

He produced wrought iron lamps, chandeliers, hand rails and began designing furniture like his "Chaise inclinable" of 1924.

He became a member of the committee in 1926.

He supplied the gates for the Verdun Memorial in 1928 and various parts for a number of buildings in Paris, including those designed by Robert Mallet-Stevens, for whom he produced the railings and gratings for the private mansions in Rue Mallet-Stevens in 1926.

In 1930 Prouvé helped establish the Union of Modern Artists whose manifesto read, "We like logic, balance and purity," although he shaped his public image around the idea that he was not married to a specific aesthetic.

He opened the successful "Ateliers Jean Prouvé" in 1931 and began collaborating with French architects Eugène Beaudoin and Marcel Lods on projects such as the Maison du Peuple in Clichy, an aviation club and an army camp.

He also collaborated with Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret on a variety of furniture designs.

The war kept "Ateliers" in business manufacturing bicycles and a stove called "Pyrobal" that could burn on any fuel.

He favored the public sector in the growing areas of health, education and administration, which reflected a social ideal but also offered the economies of scale.

He used this material to design storefronts, elevators or furniture (for student housing in 1932, for example).

By 1936 he was producing a catalogue of standard models for hospitals, schools and offices.

The potential for mass production inspired Prouvé to develop and patent industrial products using folded sheet metal for the construction of buildings.

These included movable partitioning, metal doors and elevator cages.

When the French government announced the initiation of paid vacations for workers, Prouvé responded with the BLPS (1937–39), a prefabricated steel vacation home.

Weighing less than two tons, the 3.3 square meter (35.5 square feet) structure could be put up or taken down by five workers in four to five hours.

In 1939 he designed portable barracks for the French army.

Later, "Ateliers Jean Prouvé" were commissioned by the Reconstruction Ministry to mass-produce frame houses for refugees.

At a time when cheap, speedily built housing was needed all over the world, Prouvé was recognized as a leader in the field, alongside the North American designer R. Buckminster Fuller.

During the war Prouvé was also politically active as a member of the French Resistance and he was recognized for this involvement after the war by being named mayor of Nancy.

He was also made a member of the Advisory Assembly after Liberation and made the Departmental Inspector for Technical Education.

In the period after World War II (1939–45) there was increased interest in using new methods and materials for mass production of furniture.

Manufacturers of materials such as formica, plywood, aluminum, and steel sponsored the salons of the Société des artistes décorateurs.

Designers who exhibited their experimental work at the salons in this period included Prouvé, Pierre Guariche, René-Jean Caillette, Joseph-André Motte, Charlotte Perriand, Antoine Philippon and Jacqueline Lecoq.

In 1947 Prouvé built the Maxéville factory where he produced furniture and undertook extensive architectural research on the uses of aluminum.