History of La Maison Tropicale

- In 1939, Jean Prouve did a drawing of a facade where many of the same characteristics that were to appear on the final houses delivered to Africa: louvered venetian blinds and a ventilated, dual layered ceiling.

- In 1949, Jean Prouve was commissioned by Paul Herbe to build The first Maison Tropicale, which was prominently exhibited on the banks of the Seine before being disassembled and flown to Niamey, in Niger, where it housed a secondary school headmaster Despite the short time of 5 months needed for the house to be built, the cost of the house is too significant and was called off. The complications of the concrete structure resulted for the house to not be available for occupancy till 3 months after the parts arrived on July 1949.

- The Brazzaville house (1952) was intended as both the Information Bureau for Aluminium Français and the home of its director. the Niamey house was placed on a concrete slab, while the two Brazzaville houses were placed on pilings.

- The smaller one of the Brazzaville houses became an office for the Bureau Régional d’Information de l’Aluminum Français and was partitioned into a Director’s office, a secretary’s office, and a waiting room. The larger one became a residence for the commercial director of Aluminum Français, Jacques Piaget, and was partitioned into a master bedroom plus two smaller bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom.



- Only 3 maison Tropicales were ever shipped to french colonies in africa, and the project ended there because of the high cost of transporting the materials from France to Africa. The three houses were left abandoned until the 1980's.

- The houses in Brazzaville were rediscovered in 1982 by Patrice Bartoli, a former government architect; in the 1990’s, he found out that the owner of the Brazzaville houses planned to tear them down. The three Prouvé tropical houses, still in situ in the Republic of Congo, were found in a severely damaged state due to the civil war and lack of maintenance, riddled with bullet holes.

  

- In 1997, Eric Touchaleaume and Robert Rubin began to devise a "rescue" plan to transport the structures out of the country, as the houses were under the threat of being torn down and sold component by component.

- In 2001, Robert Rubin instigated a rescue operation for one of the buildings in Brazzaville to Paris, where it was erected back.
- André Balazs acquired La Maison Tropicale in June 2007 from Christie's International auction house in New York City.

- In celebration of the first major exhibition of Jean Prouvé's work in the UK at the Design Museum, he has loaned the house for display outside Tate Modern, from February 5th, 2008. It will reside in London until the Spring, whereupon it will find a new home in the Tropics.

- Les Maisons Tropicales are the culmination of twenty years of experimentation by Prouvé into the prefabrication and industrial production of buildings.



Composed by Jennifer Lim & Jonas Chin