ʺOn Quai Alexandre III Jean Prouvé has built the handsomest house I know of: the most perfect object for living in, the most sparkling thing ever constructed. It’s all the real, built outcome of a lifetime of research […]. ʺ —Le Corbusier exclaimed, after visiting the prototype shown in Paris in February 1956.
The ʺJours Meilleursʺ house, designed by Jean Prouvé, perfectly summed up the notion of the mass-produced detached dwelling—lasting, light, economical and comfortable—that he had been working on for almost twenty years. The project also illustrated the constructor’s reactivity. Faced with the urgency of the situation caused by the housing crisis, in just a few weeks he perfected a model combining his earlier experiments with an innovative building technique and the latest materials.
The construction approach was based on a concept devised with architect Maurice Silvy at Prouvé’s factory in Maxéville in 1952. On a dished concrete base was placed a prefabricated steel central unit housing the kitchen, bathroom and toilet; supporting a pressed steel beam, the unit constituted the substructure. The shell was made of thermoformed wood sandwich panels and the roof of aluminum slabs that also extended out to cover the porch. The public was as enthused by the idea as practicing architects, but this 57m² (613 sq ft) house that took seven hours to assemble was too revolutionary for its time: the official approval needed for mass-production was not granted, and only five were ever built.
