A Rare Jean Prouvé Prefab Is Asking €1.5M at Design Miami / Paris

Jean Prouvé gave us feats of engineering in furniture form: the Potence lamp, the Standard chair, and the Compas Direction desk, among other elegant, era-defining furnishings born of his industrial mind.

The French designer and constructeur also created some of the first prefabricated homes, meant for mass production at the onset of World War II. Very few were made, however, making it a rare opportunity when one goes up for sale.

But now there are two: The 6x6 Demountable House (in feet, about 20 by 20), currently featured at Design Miami / Paris, the inaugural offshoot of the global fair that runs through October 22; and the F 8X8 BCC House (around 26 by 26 feet), on exhibit at Paris+ par Art Basel through November 6.

Both homes are being offered by Galerie Patrick Seguin, a longtime purveyor of Prouvé’s work and a champion of his prefabricated homes for more than 30 years.

The gallery is currently asking  €1.5 million for the 6x6 Demountable House. A similar prefab by Prouvé sold for between €450,000 and €550,000 at a 2018 Sotheby’s auction. In 2021, another  another sold for £325,250 in London, or roughly €380,500 based on the exchange rate at the time, surpassing the high end of the pre-auction estimate of £280,000. A rare one-room prefabricated house designed by Prouvé in 1945 sold at Design Miami for $2.5 million in 2013, or roughly €1.88 million.

To meet demands for affordable housing during World War II, Prouvé designed the homes with an axial portal frame he patented in 1939 that made them adaptable, inexpensive, and easy to build.

Designed in collaboration with Pierre Jeanneret, the F 8X8 BCC House, designed for a family of five, is nearly all-wood. Since there was a wartime shortage of metal, the material was used sparingly as hardware for bracing and assembly elements. While only a few of them were built, starting in 1941 and ending in 1943, even fewer survived.

In 1944, Prouvé was commissioned by the French government to design 400 prefabricated homes at the end of World War II to accommodate refugees in Lorraine and Franche-Comté. The portable 6x6 Demountable House could be built on site in a single day by a team of three people, making it well-suited for demands of the day.

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Design Icon: Jean Prouvé