Jean Prouve Complete Works, Vol 2: 1934-1944

Architectural Review, The, Nov, 2000 by Peter Blundell Jones

By Peter Sulzer, Basel: Birkhauser. 2000. sFRI48 (DMI68)

The Egan Report and rediscovered enthusiasm for prefabricated construction are a timely reminder of the adage that those who fail to attend to the lessons of history are bound to repeat them. Peter Sulzer, Professor emeritus from the Technical University at Stuttgart, was in the 1960s a leading designer of precast concrete component systems. Later, disillusioned, he turned to self-build and participation following the example of Walter Segal (AJ 27.7.83, ARs June 1985, March 1987). His magnum opus on Prtouve reflects both his need to understand the mechanization of architecture and his social concern, for both are combined in his hero. The blacksmith who became the inventor and producer of Modernist furniture and components, and eventually of whole prefabricated buildings, was also a pioneer in profit sharing and paid holidays. His efforts to mechanize craft production were geared not merely to technical efficiency and economy, but embraced the whole production process and its social consequences. This is one reason we should look closely at Prouve. The other is for the ingenuity of his details, especially in folded metal, for which the detail drawings in this series of books are invaluable. Vol 1 (published 1995, reviewed AR May 1997) covered the years 19 17-33. The current volume takes the oeuvre to 1944, including the difficult years of the occupation when the factory made stoves and bicycle frames, and Prouve was involved in the resistance. When the Germans tried to requisition one of the presses Prouve planned to blow it up, but it proved too heavy to remove, so survived to provide good service for some decades more. Besides the endless furniture, doors and windows, shopfronts and fittings, Vol 2 covers the flying club at Buc and the first prefabricated houses and barracks.

Pride of place goes, however, to the Maison du Peuple in Clichy (architects Beaudouin and Lods) with its astonishing retractable floor and advanced curtain wall system. There is much to ponder here for Egan enthusiasts, who need to discover how precisely buildings are like cars and how they are not. There are also clues about the logic of production, about how components can be produced, transported and put together, and how the numbing effects of repetition can be avoided. It is time to cut through the image making of Hi-tech and re-examine the spirit of the '2CV kind of thinking' that drove this ingenious and unpretentious Frenchman.