Jean Prouve. The poetics of the technical object

With his exploration of technical thinking and the objects that arose from this pursuit, Jean Prouvé is one of the major figures in architecture and design of the 20th century.nThe publication is devoted to his technical and planning-oriented thinking. From the start – first as an ironmonger, then as an industrialist in the heyday of the ateliers in Maxéville, later with CIMT and as an engineering consultant – Jean Prouvé dedicatedly pursued the project of construction “by industry” – as he himself then put it in the title of his book Une architecture par l’industrie (Architecture by Industry). nThe volume provides an overview of his technical ideas and concepts, his tools and the production structures he employed, his collaborative work with architects and engineers as well as characteristic projects of his: furniture, buildings and construction systems. Prouvé’s world is not only explored here by the forty-two authors of this volume but is also represented in Prouvé’s own texts and drawings for his lectures at CNAM, the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers.