Temporary School of Villejuif, 1957Set-up

By 1957, JEAN PROUVÉ was recognized among France’s top designers of temporary emergency buildings, and as a result was commissioned to design a school complex in Villejuif, in the inner Paris suburbs. The specifications called for a lightweight building that could be put together quickly and would lend itself to being dismantled and re-erected elsewhere.

The construction principle that Prouvé developed for the school drew from the principle he had applied to the Cachat pump room at Evian, which is now a classified historical monument. Based on prefabricated elements, the asymmetrical structure used sheet steel props to support a curved, cantilevered, laminated wood roof. The fully glazed facade was punctuated by sheet steel sections serving both as stiffeners and ventilation elements.

Economic but elegant and functional at the same time, the Villejuif Temporary School is in fact a masterly demonstration of mass-production of permanent structures. Even if government departments failed to follow up on these ideas, the later recycling of Villejuif components and the presence of a grid bay from the school in major national museums have ensured the project a place in the history of 20th-century architecture.