Luis Fernández-Galiano, Norman Foster   Jean Prouvé (1901-1984) is a key figure of 20th century architecture and design. From his early production of wrought ironworks for buildings and metal furniture pieces, up to his late work in the development of the curtain wall and grid structures,

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Initial Workshops: from Apprentice to Master  Jean Prouvé was born in Paris in 1901, son of a painter and a pianist, but his creative life is tied to the craft tradition of Nancy, centered on wrought ironwork, furniture and glass. The École de Nancy

Catherine Prouvé   A very personal journey, traversing the 20th century, of a man who was upright, modest, generous, discreet, silently attentive, with no other a priori than an intimate knowledge of material and precision-strong mastery of his craft. As involved and r

Peter Sulzer   Jean Prouvé was not the first to construct buildings entirely of metal (he was preceded by Eiffel, Gropius/Hirsch, Fillod…); but he was perhaps one of the first (with Hausermann) to produce movable sheet metal partitioning, and one of the first (with

Mariano Bayón   It is generally believed that the values commonly attributed to architecture are authentic, logical and immovable. That is, that when at a given historic moment an architect’s work is assessed positively, the ideas underlying it become universal. Wha

Franz Graf   Jean Prouvé drew, shaped, manufactured and built a lot but, as is common in the world of builders, left few writings. In the few that exist, often transcribed conversations, Prouvé recurrently spoke of the material-transformation relation; that is, o

Ignacio Paricio   In the forties decade of the past century, when I was born, Jean Prouvé was designing a lightweight facade solution that today serves as model for the design of enclosures: the facade of windows. The window, understood as an opening filled by a syste

José María de Lapuerta   Where will Jean Prouvé’s house go? One answer to this question could be US$4.97 million, the price at which Christie’s in New York City sold one of the Maison Tropicale prototypes that were designed for Brazzaville – without plumbing, electricity, he

Jean-François Archieri   In 1947, Ateliers Jean Prouvé abandoned its outgrown workshops on Rue des Jardiniers, in the town center of Nancy, for larger space in an industrial area on the northern edges of the city. The need for expansion came hand in hand with a desire to tak

Jean-Louis Cohen   After the Maxéville workshops closed down, and while he was still head of the CIMT (Compagnie Industrielle de Matériel de Transport), Jean Prouvé had the opportunity, for around twelve years, to express his ideas about the world and his work method b

Norman Foster   There was a time in our evolving society when the making of things was considered not only honourable but was inextricably linked to their aesthetics. Perhaps, in retrospect, that is why we see integrity and consistency in the work of those individua