Jean Prouvé (1901 – 1984), Father of High Tech Design

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. (Jean Prouvé – Wikipedia, 2015)

Jean Prouvé Standard chairs around a walnut and white mid-century dining table. 150 Best Interior Design Ideas
Jean Prouvé Standard chairs around a walnut and white mid-century dining table. 150 Best Interior Design Ideas

Prouve was known all over the world, not just in France. His ideas and accomplishments tell us much about the rocky relationship between architecture and technology at the heart of the Modern Movement. Some say he was the father of “high tech,” greatly influencing Norman Foster, Jean Nouvel, Rogers, Piano, and others. Prouvé is also a link to the world of the arts and crafts movement in the 1800s. His whole life can be seen as an attempt to bring the principles of high-quality manufacturing to the world of building, which was doomed to fail in the end. (The French Father of High Tech, 1991)

Early Years

He had been taught to value well-made things since he was young. Victor Prouvé’s artist father was born in Nancy and moved to Paris in 1902. In 1902, he moved back to Nancy and took over for Emile Gallé as president of the Ecole de Nancy, which was set up to promote the decorative arts. Jean learned to work with metal and opened his own shop in Nancy in 1924. His early work showed how art nouveau was giving way to art deco. Prouvé made the fancy gates to the Nancy pavilion at the 1925 Paris exhibition.

Bibliothèque Mexique by Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé – (Carnegie Museum of Art)

Biography

But by the late 1920s, he worked with avant-garde designers like Mallet-Stevens and Chareau. He was himself becoming a designer, experimenting with metal furniture and cladding for buildings. 

In 1933, he designed his first building, a garage for Citroën conceived on the lines of a contemporary car. The client rejected this radical scheme, but Prouvé was able to complete several other buildings, the most notable of which was the 1937 Maison du Peuple in the Paris suburb of Clichy, which combined a retail market, assembly hall, and offices in a highly flexible, metal-clad envelope that has often been seen as the forerunner of the Pompidou Centre.

In 1929, he helped start the UAM (Union des Artistes Modernes) and was shown at its exhibitions afterwards. 

Furniture

His workshop produced furniture for Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann and Charlotte Perriand. In 1930, he developed the ‘murrideau’ (curtain wall) replaceable, moveable wall system, the first of its kind; it was based on light metal stanchions. He used it in the 1938 Club House on the Buc airfield and later in the 1958 Lycée at Bagnols-sur-Ceze.  In 1932, he designed furniture for the Université de Nancy.  All his furniture, except for the reproductions from the 1980s, was sold exclusively by Steph Simon in Paris.

"Antony" Chair (model 356) by
Jean Prouvé 1950
“Antony” Chair (model 356) by
Jean Prouvé 1950 (Milwaukee Art Museum)

Prefabrication

In the 19th century, prefabrication became more common, and the Nissen hut, which was invented in 1916, was probably the first whole building to be made in large numbers. But Prouvé believed that a portable holiday house could be sold commercially. Within a year or two, however, his factory concentrated on manufacturing army barracks. It shifted to building houses for those who had lost their homes due to the war after 1945 (when Prouvé became Mayor of Nancy). 

Structure of a 6×9 Demountable House, 1944
Structure of a 6×9 Demountable House, 1944 – Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, Seoul, South Korea

His system for building small metal houses on piles was used to build the airports for Beaudoin and Lods in Buc and the Maison du Peuple in Clichy. He also built prefabricated houses in Meudon-Bellevue in 1949, a temporary school in Villejuif in 1953, an apartment building in Paris in 1953 with Lionel Mirabaud, units with prefabricated concrete cores for Abbée Pierre in 1956, a spa building in Evian in 1957 with Maurice Novarina, and a school in Bagnols-sur-Ceze in 1958 with Daniel Badani and Marcel Roux-Dorlut. 1959 houses in Meudon-Bellevue, 1958 ‘Sahara-type prefabricated houses, 1963 and 1967–69 Free University (with Candilis, Josic, and Woods, and Manfred Schiedhelm) in Berlin-Dahlem, 1967 Congress Hall in Grenoble, 1967 Office Tower (with Jean de Mailly and Jacques Depussé) at La Défense, Paris, and 1968 Total service stations (Byars, 1994)

But hopes for a mass market for factory-built houses proved illusory. In 1956, Prouvé ownership of his own company lost financial control, and the new owners fired him. 

Interior - armchairs are by Jean Prouve, Architectural Digest, August, 2015
Interior – armchairs are by Jean Prouve, Architectural Digest, August, 2015

Later Years

The last 30 years of his life saw Jean Prouvé involved in building projects throughout France, yet at one point to a degree from the control of the design process. 

But in the 1950s and 1960s, he couldn’t stop developing new ideas. For example, he worked on developing a logical design system for gas stations. Buildings for extreme climates, whether polar or tropical, were another concern.

The buildings that showed Prouvé’s influence the most after the war were the ones that look most like high-tech buildings now. The Palais de la Foire in Lille (1953), the school at Villejuif (1957), the 1967 Palais des Expositions in Grenoble, and the various house projects prefigure Rogers’s Lloyd’s building, Nouvel’s Arab Institute in Paris, and Foster’s Stansted. 

Sources

Byars, M., & Riley, T. (2004). The design encyclopedia. Laurence King Publishing. https://amzn.to/3ElmSlL

Jean Prouvé – Wikipedia. (2015, April 11). Jean Prouvé – Wikipedia. Retrieved April 2, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Prouv%C3%A9

The French Father of High Tech. (1991, January 16). Newspapers.com. Retrieved April 2, 2023, from https://www.newspapers.com/image/751447172/?terms=%22Jean%20Prouve%22&match=1

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    Maurice Dufrêne (1876 – 1955), French Decorative Artist

    Maurice Dufrêne (1876–1955) was a French decorative artist who headed the Maîtrise workshop of the Galeries Lafayette department store. He designed many different types of decorative art, including metalwork, ceramics, glass, and fabric. His designs from 1910 onward are austere and neoclassical, reminiscent of the Louis XVI style.Read More →


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  • Art Nouveau: The French Aesthetic (hardcover)

    Art Nouveau: The French Aesthetic (hardcover)

    This book’s stature is rare. It took five years to compile 624 pages and 740 pictures about Art Nouveau in France. Arwas examines the movement’s development in Nancy and Paris using never-before-published pictures. The comprehensive, witty narrative extends over architecture, haute couture, and the role of women in Art Nouveau with a look at Sarah…


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  • Suzanne Guiguichon (1901 – 1985) French Furniture Designer

    Suzanne Guiguichon (1901 – 1985) French Furniture Designer

    Suzanne Guiguichon was a French furniture designer and decorator. She was born and worked in Paris. Since 1929 she worked as a designer with Maurice Dufrene at the Galeries Lafayette design studio La Maitrise in Paris. Most of the furniture, clocks, lighting, fabrics, rugs, accessories Guiguichon designed anonymously.Read More →


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  • Alessi PSJS Juicy Salif Citrus Squeezer (Design Classic)

    Alessi PSJS Juicy Salif Citrus Squeezer (Design Classic)

    Alessi PSJS Juicy Salif Citrus Squeezer designed by Philippe Starck On a sunny day in the spring of 1989, PhilippeRead More →


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  • Pierre Paulin (1927 – 2009) French furniture designer

    Pierre Paulin (1927 – 2009) French furniture designer

    He was active in research for the government-sponsored Mobilier International. His first plastic object was the 1953 Chair 157 in polyester, ABS, and elastomers produced by Artifort of Maastricht. Around 1955, he was one of the first to work in elasticised fabrics for Thonet and subsequently for Artifort.Read More →


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  • Richard Peduzzi (b.1943) French Set and Furniture Designer

    Richard Peduzzi (b.1943) French Set and Furniture Designer

    Richard Peduzzi (b.1943) is a French painter and scenic furniture designer. Education He studied drawing and sculpture under Charles Auffet.Read More →


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  • SS. Normandie Art Deco Palace

    SS. Normandie Art Deco Palace

    The ship, its decor, and furniture reflected everything stylish, sophisticated, forward-thinking, and French when it was launched in the age of grand style, a decade after the successful exposition of modern design at the 1925 Paris exhibition.Read More →


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  • 40+ French Designers in the applied and decorative arts

    40+ French Designers in the applied and decorative arts

    The following posts are a selection of French Designers that I have posted about over the last year. French design styles incorporate the new and the old. It is bold and sophisticated. It is attention to detail, whether a brooch, a clock, fabric, or glass. Read More →


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  • Jean Schlumberger (1907 – 1987) French jewellery designer

    Jean Schlumberger (1907 – 1987) French jewellery designer

    Jean Schlumberger (1907–1987), one of the most accomplished artists of the twentieth century, produced objects of unrivalled beauty. He was a man of exquisite taste, a jeweller who created extraordinary jewelled statements with a feeling of depth and life. Read More →


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  • Marcel Guillemard (1886 – 1932) French Decorator & designer

    Marcel Guillemard  (1886 – 1932) French Decorator & designer

    Marcel Guillemard (1886 – 1932) was a French decorator and furniture designer. He was born and professionally active in Paris.Read More →


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  • Boris-Jean Lacroix (1902-1984) 🇫🇷 French Lighting Designer

    Boris-Jean Lacroix (1902-1984) 🇫🇷 French Lighting Designer

    Boris-Jean Lacroix (1902-1984) was a French Lighting Designer born in Paris. Biography Lacroix was a prolific designer of lighting, wallpaper,Read More →


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  • Eric Anthony Bagge (1890 – 1970) French architect and designer

    Eric Anthony Bagge (1890 – 1970) French architect and designer

    Eric Anthony Bagge (1890 – 1970) was a French architect and designer. He was born in the town of Antony, near Paris.Read More →


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  • Paul Poiret (1879 – 1944) – King of Fashion

    Paul Poiret (1879 – 1944) – King of Fashion

    In the early decades of the 20th century, Paul Poiret was a crucial figure in the French fashion industry, notably by adding a deep oriental flavour and rich colours to contemporary clothing. Read More →


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  • Martine Bedin (b.1957) radical architecture and design

    Martine Bedin (b.1957) radical architecture and design

    Bedin was one of the founders of the avant-garde Memphis group in Milan in 1981. Also, she has worked as an architect, industrial designer and professor. Her work is held in many important museums and private collections. Bedin’s aesthetic is typically colourful and self-consciously kitschy.Read More →


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  • Jan and Joel Martel (1896 – 1966) twin brothers and French sculptors

    Jan and Joel Martel (1896 – 1966) twin brothers and French sculptors

    Jan and Joel Martel (1896 – 1966) were twin brothers and French sculptors. They were born in Nantes and active in Paris. Cement, glass, steel, mirrors, ceramics, lacquers, and synthetics were all used in their projects.Read More →


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  • Jean Patou (1880 – 1936) 🎩 Fashion Designer

    Jean Patou (1880 – 1936) 🎩 Fashion Designer

    One of Patou’s most famous customers was the French tennis champion Suzanne Lenglen, whom he dressed both on and off the court. This lean and active young woman epitomised the 1920s “new woman.” She created a furore in 1921 when she wore Patou’s knee-length pleated skirt, which revealed much of her legs when she ran.…


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  • Andre Salomon (1891 -1970) French Lighting Engineer

    Andre Salomon (1891 -1970) French Lighting Engineer

    He was an engineer at Tompson before setting up the small electrical firm Perfécla (Perfectionnement de I’Ecla), regularly working with architects and designers, including Pierre Chareau, and André Lurcat, René Herbst, and architect Robert Mallet-Stevens. For the latter, he produced the widely published 1929 lighting fixture designed by Francis Jourdain in the form of a…


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  • Groupe des Cinq French fraternity of designers

    Groupe des Cinq French fraternity of designers

    Its members included Pierre Chareau, Raymond Templier, Dominique (André Domin and Marcel Genevriere), and Pierre Legrain. In 1926 and 1927, they showed their work as the Groupe des Cinq at Galerie Barbazanges, Paris. The gallery, at 109 rue du Faubourg St. Honoré, was designed by André Lurcat. The association is not to be confused with…


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  • Pierre-Émile Legrain (1889 -1929) French Furniture Designer

    Pierre-Émile Legrain (1889 -1929) French Furniture Designer

    He submitted cartoons in 1908 for Paul Iribe’s satirical reviews Le Témoin, L’Assiette au beurre, Le Mot, and La Baionnette. Iribe invited Legrain to collaborate with him on projects including furniture and interior design, jewelry for Robert Linzeler, and dress designs for Paquin.Read More →


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  • Jacques Hitier (1917 – 1999) French furniture designer

    Jacques Hitier (1917 – 1999) French furniture designer

    He specialised in developing industrial furniture for public contexts like schools and government buildings after WWII. He exhibited his whole body of work at both the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs and the Salon des Arts Ménagers. Hitier also created luxury and high-end home furnishings.Read More →


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  • Salon d’Automne exhibitions Paris, France

    Salon d’Automne exhibitions Paris, France

    The founders of the Salon d’Automne were a collective of artists and writers, including Eugène Carrière, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Georges Rouault, Édouard Vuillard, Joris-Karl Huysmans and Émile Verhaeren…Read More →


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  • Francis Jourdain (1876 – 1958) – painter, interior designer, ceramicist

    Francis Jourdain (1876 – 1958) – painter, interior designer, ceramicist

    Francis Jourdain (1876 – 1958), the son of architect Frantz Jourdain, was born on November 2, 1876. His father created the Salon d’Automne collection. He benefited from his parents’ friendships with prominent intellectuals (Émile Zola, Alphonse Daudet) and artists of the time (the circle of Alexandre Charpentier). Read More →


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  • René Lalique (1860 – 1945) French goldsmith and glassmaker

    René Lalique (1860 – 1945) French goldsmith and glassmaker

    Artisan in glass and creator of family firm Cristal Lalique René Lalique was a French glass designer, jeweller, furniture designer,Read More →


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  • Eileen Gray (1879 – 1976) Irish/French Furniture Designer

    Eileen Gray (1879 – 1976) Irish/French Furniture Designer

    Eileen Gray was an French furniture designer and architect. Her work reflected a stylistic pastiche of far eastern and french influences.Read More →


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  • Joseph and Pierre Moughin – French ceramicists

    Joseph and Pierre Moughin – French ceramicists

    Joseph Mougin decided to become a ceramicist after seeing an exhibition of Jean Carriès’s pottery in 1894. He set up a studio and a kiln in Montrouge with the help of sculptor friend Lemarquier and his brother Pierre Mougin.Read More →


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  • Jean Adnet (1900 – 1995) French designer

    Jean Adnet (1900 – 1995) French designer

    In 1928, Jean Adnet became director of the window-display department at Galeries Lafayette, where, in 1922, brother Jacques Adnet became director of its La Maitrise decorating studio; they collaborated under the name ‘JJ Adnet.Read More →


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  • Boucheron French Jewellery House

    Boucheron French Jewellery House

    Boucheron was a French court jeweller with branches in Paris, London, Biarritz, and New York. Founded by Frederic Boucheron (1858). Famous for elaborate diamond jewellery during the late 19th century. Expensive novelties shown at international exhibitions in Paris (1867 and 1900) and Philadelphia (1876) attracted wealthy customers (mainly American).Read More →


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  • Formes Utiles – French Organisation and Exhibitions

    Formes Utiles – French Organisation and Exhibitions

    In 1949, Formes Utiles became an independent association of UAM (Union des Artistes Modernes) through the influence of René Herbst and Charlotte Perriand and its first exhibition held at Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. Its theoretician was architect André Hermant.Read More →


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  • Henri Vever (1854 – 1942) collector of Ukiyo-e

    Henri Vever (1854 – 1942) collector of Ukiyo-e

    Vever had acquired a collection of thousands of fine ukiyo-e prints by the early twentieth century. Vever’s collection was so well-regarded that the authors of some of the first European scholarly publications on ukiyo-e relied heavily on it for most of their actual print researchRead More →


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  • ‘Exposition Universelle’ Paris 1900

    ‘Exposition Universelle’ Paris 1900

    The Exposition Universelle of 1900, better known in English as the 1900 Paris Exposition, was a world’s fair held in Paris, France, from 14 April to 12 November 1900, to celebrate the achievements of the past century and to accelerate development into the next. It was held at the esplanade of Les Invalides, the Champ…


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  • Alphonse Fouquet (1828 – 1911) French Goldsmith and Jeweller

    Alphonse Fouquet (1828 – 1911) French Goldsmith and Jeweller

    His early jewellery was in neo-Greek and neo-Renaissance styles, indistinguishable from Vever, Fossin, Morel, and Mellerio.Read More →


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  • René-André Coulon (1908 – 1997) furniture with tempered glass

    René-André Coulon (1908 – 1997)  furniture with tempered glass

    René-André Coulon was a furniture designer from France. He did architectural studies until 1937. In his work, Coulon integrated tempered glass, some of which Hagnauer, Vienna, made. He designed the interior furniture of Adnet for Saint-Gobain.Read More →


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  • La Paresse (1924 – 1925) by George Barbier

    La Paresse (1924 – 1925) by George Barbier

    George Barbier, a French graphic artist, created this scene of cultured decadence. It is a pochoir print based on a 1924 watercolor; it appeared in the following year’s fashion annual, Falbalas et Fanfreluches. Read More →


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  • Malvine Tcherniak (1894 – 1968) French/Russian Decorator

    Malvine Tcherniak (1894 – 1968) French/Russian Decorator

    In the 1920s, she designed ceramics, textiles and wallpaper and domestic items for the Primavera department store of the Au Printemps department store, Paris.Read More →


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  • Lucien Falize (1838 – 1897) French goldsmith and jeweller

    Lucien Falize (1838 – 1897) French goldsmith and jeweller

    Lucien Falize (1838- 1897) was French goldsmith and jeweller. He was active in Paris and son of Alexis Falize, father of Andre Falize. When his father retired in 1876, Lucien assumed directorship of the family business. He attempted to expand the business by showing at 1878 Paris ‘Exposition Universelle’ and becoming partners with Germain Bapst.…


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  • Bapst et Falize French Goldsmith and Jewellery Firm

    Bapst et Falize French Goldsmith and Jewellery Firm

    In 1752, Georges-Michel Bapst became King Louis XV’s jeweller and took over the direction of his father-in-shop, law’s Georges-Frédéric Stras. (Stras invented ‘strass,’ a colourless glass paste commonly used for jewellery in the 18th and 19th centuries.)Read More →


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  • Danielle Quarante: Pioneering French Furniture Designer

    Danielle Quarante: Pioneering French Furniture Designer

    She began her professional career as a graphic designer, specialising in exhibition design. In 1966 she worked on product design (children’s furniture, hi-fi systems).Read More →


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  • André Monpoix (1925 – 1976) French Furniture Designer

    André Monpoix (1925 – 1976) French Furniture Designer

    While working for Maxime Old, René Gabriel, and Jacques Dumond, they often collaborated with Alain Richard at Richard et Monpoix, designing furniture produced by Meubles TV.Read More →


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  • André Lhote (1885 – 1962) French Artist and Illustrator

    André Lhote (1885 – 1962) French Artist and Illustrator

    Lhote was born 5 July 1885 in Bordeaux, France, and learned wood carving and sculpture from the age of 12, when his father apprenticed him to a local furniture maker to be trained as a sculptor in wood. He enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux in 1898 and studied decorative sculpture until 1904.Read…


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  • Jean Puiforcat (1897 – 1945) French Art Deco Silversmith

    Jean Puiforcat (1897 – 1945) French Art Deco Silversmith

    His silver work was based on the geometric series and had smooth surfaces. Pieces were embellished with ivory, onyx, lapis lazuli, and rosewood. He also used gilding.Read More →


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