MOCA Pacific Design Center
The first museum exhibition in the US devoted to the work of this influential French designer, Jean Prouvé: Three Nomadic Structures includes an array of furniture, architectural elements, and photographs relating to Prouvé’s production from 1947 to 1953. The exhibition highlights three areas of interest for the architect at this time—schools, tropics, and aluminum—and, in doing so, focuses on three major projects corresponding to each: the Glassmaking School in Croismare, France (1948); the Tropical Houses of Niamey, Niger (1949) and Brazzaville, Congo (1951); and the Aluminum Centenary Pavilion, Paris (1954). These displays examine Prouvé’s pioneering synthesis of postwar engineering innovations with modernist architectural concerns, as in his prefabricated, dismantlable construction for the Glassmaking School, or his climate-conscious Tropical Houses in Niamey and Brazzaville. Crucially, the exhibition is designed in homage to Prouvé’s advancements in modular architecture; the installation is conceived as a “displayscape” of interlocking presentation elements that can be disassembled and reassembled for each venue of the show.
Jean Prouvé: Three Nomadic Structures was co-organized by architect Evan Douglis and historian Robert Rubin for the Arthur Ross Gallery at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, New York.