Prefabrication experiments -42- Jean Prouvé's Sahara Prototype

Early modernists recognized that providing quality housing required a balanced union of architecture, industry and politics. Intersecting industrial production with government supported innovative design organised a heroic, however sometimes fragile and contradictory relationship between the singularity of architecture and mass-production. Architects pursued the problem of housing through design. Government defined housing as an economic issue while the mass production industry sought to offer generic dwellings. Prefabrication was an attempt to bridge the three fields but remained marginal in terms of actual units produced in a factory.

Subsidized post-war housing programs encouraged industrial experiments in housing. Largely economic strategies, these agendas invoked a new type of technological architecture. Mass production percolated architectural theory and became emblematic of twentieth century prefabrication. The off-the-rack component articulated approach supported mass production as well as a new mobility in architecture. The turbulent pre-war and post war period had forced transient demographic patterns questioning architecture’s traditional link to place.

Jean Prouvé’s designs for the French government’s post-war housing programs exemplified the values of portability and mobility necessary to the post-war housing crisis. Prouvé was a self-taught architect/designer/engineer/craftsman and metalworker who applied his knowledge of new materials and production techniques toward a light semi-permanent architecture. His prototypes for the Meudon houses, the tropical houses and the 6mx6m demountable houses all proposed a kit of easily assembled and disassembled parts to provide for flexibility and adaptability.

Part of a late 50’s French government export policy, the Sahara House proposal typifies Prouvé’s ideas for the small post-war house. A simple roof structure organized around a central frame mast provided the fundamental sheltering element. The roof was designed as an oversized parasol underneath which any number of configurations could take shape. A simple design referencing traditional values of dwelling and echoing Gottfried Semper’s analysis of the Caribbean Hut, Prouvé envisioned the prototype as a light metallic frame structure that could be delivered on site and assembled by a couple of men in a few hours. The large metallic roof was completely separated from the envelope components and interior components demonstrating Prouvé’s systemic approach to prefabrication. Prouvé’s assembly aesthetic foreshadowed the high tech work of Richard Rogers, Norman Foster or Renzo Piano, which celebrated technical assembly and its representation in architecture.

Jean Prouvé's design for The Maison Sahara