NANCY, FRANCE — Jean Prouvé was at his lowest ebb. In 1952, when he was in his early 50s, the French designer lost control of his factory, which had once employed more than 200 people, and was fighting to regain ownership of his trading name and patents. Hoping to distract him, Prouvé’s family encouraged him to start a new project: the construction of a house where he would live with his wife, Madeleine, and the two youngest of their six children.


Courtesy of the Centre Pompidou and Adagp
Jean Prouvé working as an apprentice in 1917

Courtesy of the Centre Pompidou and Adagp
A prototype of a prefabricated house Jean Prouvé designed for use in Africa.

The Prouvés bought a plot of land on a wooded hill on the northern outskirts of Nancy. The site was cheap because it was thought to be too steep to build there. Working with his architect brother Henri, Prouvé designed a long, skinny single-story building made mostly from prefabricated components foraged from the factory. Some parts were originally intended for emergency housing, and others were left over from the construction of a school. His children pitched in by helping him to haul the components up the hill in an ancient Jeep and to assemble them, finishing the house in 1954.

Peeping out between trees, the home, known today as Maison Jean Prouvé, is a model of rationalist ingenuity with tiny bedrooms resembling ship’s cabins and panoramic views across Nancy from the glass wall in the living room. The house now belongs to the City of Nancy, which rents it to an architect and his family on condition that the public can visit at certain times. Together with Prouvé’s workshop from his factory, which has been rebuilt in the grounds, it offers fascinating insights into the life and work of one of the most influential designers — or “factory workers,” as Prouvé described himself — of the 20th century and is a highlight of the current “Tribute to Jean Prouvé” in Nancy.

The tribute includes the opening of permanent galleries devoted to Prouvé’s work at the Musée des beaux-arts and Musée de l’Histoire du Fer. Running through Oct. 28 are an exhibition of his ironwork at Musée de l’École de Nancy, an analysis of his impact on the city during and after World War II at Musée Lorrain and the installation of one of the prefabricated Maisons Tropicales he designed for use in Africa at Musée des beaux-arts. It is to be displayed at Musée de l’Histoire du Fer in 2014. A map has been produced identifying a dozen of Prouvé’s projects in Nancy, ranging from the aquarium doors and a funerary monument, to his family home.

Nancy is renowned for the historic grandeur of its medieval churches and the sumptuous 18th-century Place Stanislas. (When I described the latter as “one of the most beautiful squares in France” to a local, she corrected me with: “No, in the world.”) The tribute to Prouvé asserts its Modernist credentials as the city he chose as his home.

Born in Paris, the second of seven children of the artist Victor Prouvé and the pianist Marie Duhamel, Prouvé grew up in Nancy, where his father co-founded the École de Nancy, an alliance of local artists, industrialists and artisans that championed the Art Nouveau movement in France. After leaving school, Prouvé was apprenticed to master blacksmiths in Paris before returning to Nancy to open a small forge in 1924. Having begun by making wrought-iron grilles and doors, he went on to design metal furniture and other objects intended for mass production.

Prouvé’s work was always more austere than his father’s, and rapidly became wholly utilitarian. “He had no interest in aesthetics,” said Cathérine Coley, who co-curated the tribute. “His work was determined solely by its function.” But Prouvé shared the underlying principles of the École de Nancy, often quoting his father’s belief in the importance of “industrial production for the widest possible public."

By the 1930s, his workshop was manufacturing furniture and architectural components for schools, factories and other buildings. During World War II, Prouvé developed a barrack unit that could be assembled in three hours, only to be compelled to make cooking stoves and bicycle frames under the German occupation. He joined the French Resistance, using the code name “locksmith,” and was appointed mayor of Nancy after the war before returning to manufacturing.

Prouvé continued his wartime research into speedily assembled structures by making emergency housing for refugees and the homeless from modular wooden panels, as metal was still scarce. (A 1945 emergency shelter is in the Musée Lorrain exhibition.) After opening his factory in 1947, Prouvé produced more sophisticated prefabricated structures including the Maisons Tropicales. He was devoted to his employees, whom he called “compagnons” or “comrades,” and insisted that each one owned at least one share in the company. When a janitor explained that he could not afford to do so, Prouvé bought a share for him. After being forced out of the factory by his financial backer, he worked mostly as a consultant in Paris, but spent as much time as possible in Nancy, and died at Maison Jean Prouvé in 1984.

The Nancy tribute comes at a time when Prouvé’s ideals are in danger of being obscured by his improbable posthumous role as the darling of the design-art market. Would the man who referred to himself as an “anarchist in a good sense” have approved of the furniture he designed for schools and factories being auctioned off as collectors’ trophies? Unlikely.

Perversely, Prouvé’s commitment to mass production has enhanced the marketability of his work, because there is so much of it for dealers to sell. (Most of his contemporaries made furniture in smaller quantities.) The discrepancy between his vision of his designs and the market’s is illustrated by the contrast between the faded panels of his home and the exquisitely reconstructed Maison Tropicale at Musée des beaux-arts, whose gleaming finishes would never have survived the journey to Africa, let alone its climate.

Gorgeous as the Maison Tropicale looks, it has not simply been restored, but beautified, which may not be what Prouvé would have wished. As he said: “If people understand, there’s no need to explain. If they don’t, there’s no use explaining.”

A version of this article appeared in print on August 20, 2012, in The International Herald Tribune.