Description: JEAN PROUVÉ: THREE NOMADIC STRUCTURES 2002 Columbia Books of Architecture Catalogue 6 40 pages of furniture, architectural elements, and photographs relating to three of his modular buildings Peter Rice [introduction]: JEAN PROUVÉ: THREE NOMADIC STRUCTURES. New York: Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, 2002. First edition [Columbia Books of Architecture Catalogue 6]. Slim quarto. Die cut printed wrappers. 40 pp. Fully illustrated in black and white. Trivial wear overall, but a nearly fine copy of this elegant production. 9 x 9 softcover book with 40 pages devoted to the work of French designer Jean Prouvé and including an array of furniture, architectural elements, and photographs relating to three of his modular buildings. Joseph Giovannini reviewed the Columbia exbition in New York magazine in 2003: “University galleries may not enjoy the highest profile in this city, where institutional Goliaths tend to suck up all the oxygen. But their curators often manage to present—on limited budgets in small spaces—tightly focused shows with drop-dead thinking and edgy work. Under the direction of architect Evan Douglis, Columbia University’s Arthur Ross Gallery has regularly mounted provocative, idea-driven shows, and its current exhibition, Jean Prouvé: Three Nomadic Structures (running through April 23, 2004), is no exception. “No New York show has presented the evidence of architecture’s shift from a mechanical to a digital design paradigm more graphically than “Nomadic Structures.” Digital technology has challenged and inspired the field—to the point of identity crisis. Co-curator Robert Rubin lent furniture, vintage photographs, and architectural parts from his own collection of artifacts produced by Prouvé, the legendary mid-century French architect. Several modular doors, soffits, easy chairs, and grammar-school desks, made of bent metal frames and wood, document the work of an architect who pursued industry’s potential for housing and furnishing the world through the logic and economies of factory production. “While his compatriot Le Corbusier sculpted forms inspired by evocative mud-packed buildings that he discovered in Saharan Africa, Prouvé was advocating nomadic architecture for African states, modular houses that could be shipped, erected, dismantled, and shipped again like so many Tinker Toys. Prouvé manufactured the components of his furniture and houses from a detailed understanding of fit, connections, materials, and the conveyor belt. “Fascinated by automobile and aeronautical technology, Prouvé would certainly have embraced the architectural application of computers in the design of cars and planes. Indeed, Douglis here created the modular pieces of a background that is demountable, remountable, and eminently transportable: This show could travel. Its surface of turbulent waves, sprayed with twelve coats of turquoise automobile paint, floats the eye up to artifacts lifted in moments of repose above the sea of intensity. A leader in the application of computer technology to architectural design, Douglis has moved beyond the white box, inventing new ways to showcase objects. Clarifying the designer’s work, the installation is as interesting as the exhibits it supports: Douglis is channeling Prouvé.” Jean Prouvé (French, 1901–1984) started his career in 1916 training as a metalworker in the ambience of the École de Nancy, a bastion of Art Nouveau where his father was director. In 1924, as part of his ongoing efforts to broaden his knowledge he opened his own workshop and became a specialist in the field of sheet metal processing. Before long he was asked to work with some of the most innovative architects of his time. As a result of having received an assignment from Robert Mallet Stevens, he succeeded in gaining a toehold in the inner circle of avant-garde architects, and joined forces with Eugène Beaudouin and Marcel Lods to construct his first technical and functional masterpieces near Paris between 1935 and 1939: the Roland Garros Aeroplane Club in Buc and the Maison du Peuple in Clichy. As of 1930, as one of the founding members of the ‘Union des artistes modernes’, Prouvé began to put his early furniture designs on display at the exhibitions of the group. These sheet metal objects were still individually made but already indicated what he was to produce in the future, namely technical objects for mechanical production, which were so uncompromisingly well thought out in their details and so precisely crafted that there was nothing to hide – in fact, even the construction itself functioned as a decisive design element. Since 1947 he started to operate an entire factory in Maxéville, outside Nancy. The "Ateliers Jean Prouvé" always offered new products – from highly specialized products made to client specifications all the way to facade elements or mass-produced furniture. When collaborating with architects such as Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and later Candilis, Josic and Woods, Maurice Novarina and Oscar Niemeyer, Prouvé not only realized their plans but also always made his own contributions to the aesthetic quality of their buildings. Within a short period he succeeded in creating four decidedly independent architectural masterpieces: In 1954, the house which he built for himself and his family in Nancy from leftovers from his former factory and in the same year a giant pavilion for the centennial celebration of aluminium on the banks of the Seine in Paris; in 1956, the prototype of a prefabricated house for the homeless program of Emmaus founder, Abbé Pierre; and in 1957 Evian’s majestic refreshment stand above Lake Geneva. Please visit my Ebay store for an excellent and ever-changing selection of rare and out-of-print design books and periodicals covering all aspects of 20th-century visual culture. 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End Time: 2025-01-06T20:43:11.000Z
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