The villa Jean Prouvé designed like his famous Standard chair reappears

Hardly anyone knows the villa in Sainte-Maxime, on the southern coast of France, which Jean Prouvé designed as if it were one of his chairs. Assembled in 1953 from a metal structure — which closely resembles that of the famous Standard chair, designed by him and still produced by Vitra — this single-story house perfectly tells the way of working of the French architect, who preferred the title of “constructeur” or “factory man” to this one.

A rectangular module multiplies along the perimeter of the building, marking a succession of wood, sheet metal, and glass panels. Interrupting the sequence, in some places, is the presence of small transparent circles that pierce the metal background, generating a pattern that is one of Prouvé’s signatures. 

Along the perimeter, a series of vertical supports holds the continuous roof: a canopy that protects from the sun and rain, creating a sheltered walkway all around the house. These metal pillars, treated like large screws, bolt in some places wooden elements that become benches integrated into the architecture.

The prefabricated architecture, with its rigorous and orthogonal lines, fits into the Mediterranean landscape among pines and cypresses, finding a balance with the soft volumes of the surrounding hill. Here, the rigidity of the metal dialogues with the local stone used for the retaining walls and for a small bathing architecture. The latter, through a stone staircase, leads to an organic-shaped pool that seems to follow the natural slope of the ground.

The Villa Lopez project closely recalls another famous work: Villa Dollander. It was precisely by visiting the latter, designed by Henri Prouvé and built with his brother Jean, that Raymond Lopez was fascinated by the two’s construction system, deciding to commission for himself this extraordinary variation on the theme in Sainte-Maxime.

Visitors to TEFAF New York will be able to observe Villa Lopez closely from May 15 to 19, when the fair returns to animate Manhattan’s Park Avenue Armory with some of the most important art and design galleries in the world. Among these, the Parisian Galerie Patrick Seguin, for decades a point of reference for Prouvé’s work — as well as that of Charlotte Perriand, Pierre Jeanneret, and Le Corbusier — which for the occasion has curated a space entirely dedicated to the French constructeur. 

The exhibition reveals to the public for the first time another forgotten masterpiece: the Valençaude school (1954). The project dialogues with a series of better-known architectures, from the SCAL pavilion (1940) to the F 8x8 BCC house (1941), up to the 6x6 and 6x9 emergency housing modules (1944) and those for the 8x8 reconstruction (1945). The itinerary is completed by his holiday home in Carnac (1946), the famous Maison des Jours Meilleurs (1956), the Croismare school, and the Maxéville Design Office, both from 1948.

At the center of the scene, a monumental table of over three meters, designed in 1952 for the Cité Universitaire d’Antony, serves as the backbone of the entire space. A piece of extreme rarity, the table represents a turning point in Prouvé’s production: here converge the experiments on folded steel started in the 1930s, where technical synthesis translates directly into the plastic form of the furniture.

The selection of works confirms Galerie Patrick Seguin’s dedication to researching and enhancing Prouvé’s legacy. A mission that continues in the historic headquarters in the Bastille district, a monumental space designed by Jean Nouvel — guest editor of Domus in 2022 — where the promotion of the French master ranges with philological rigor from the micro of design to the macro of his famous demountable houses. 

Opening image: Jean Prouvé, Villa Lopez, Ombres Bleues, 1953. Courtesy Galerie Patrick Seguin