Patrick Seguin restores Jean Prouvé’s Maison des Jours Meilleurs
An animation by Galerie Patrick Seguin, incorporating archival photographs and computer graphics, showing the design and construction of Jean Prouvé's Maison des Jours Meilleurs (1956)
The winter of 1954 was a particularly harsh one in France. Homeless people were dying in the streets. Abbé Pierre, France’s equivalent of Mother Teresa, made an appeal for donations to build emergency housing. Then he went to see Jean Prouvé, who had proven his skill in dire situations by developing small, prefabricated homes for displaced people after the war.
For the clergyman, Prouvé designed the 'Maison des Jours Meilleurs' - a house for better days. A few men equipped with simple tools could build the house in seven hours. It measured 57 square metres, with two bedrooms and a large living area.
A steel cylindrical element painted olive green contained a kitchen on one side and a bathroom on the other, and also held up the central roof beam. Beechwood panels fitted with windows slid around the periphery to make walls. When Le Corbusier saw it, he wrote: 'Jean Prouvé has built the handsomest house I know: the most perfect object for living in, the most sparkling thing ever constructed.' But the government never approved the project, and only five were ever built.
Three years ago, art dealer Patrick Seguin saw that a Maison des Jours Meilleurs was going up for auction in Nancy, Prouvé’s birthplace, and he snapped it up, believing it to be the last one still in existence. The French dealer has pretty much cornered the market on Prouvé architecture, and now owns around 15 modular houses, most of them unique or very rare. He meticulously restores each one before exhibiting it, often alongside archival photos and explanatory films, saying 'The educational aspect is very important to me.' In the past couple of years he has mounted two for display in the Tuileries gardens - the Ferembal office and the Métropole Aluminium house - and he will show the Métropole again in Basel this June.
A team of builders specialising in Prouvé made the trip from Nancy to Paris earlier this month to assemble the Maison des Jours Meilleurs in Seguin’s lofty gallery, where it will stay until the end of September (he plans to show it at the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea next spring.) Though the gallery still earns the bulk of its revenue from furniture, Seguin is passionate about the houses - and the lengthy process of reconstructing them. Says the gallerist: 'It’s more exciting than buying a chair on Monday, photographing it Tuesday and selling it on Wednesday.'
ADDRESS
Galerie Patrick Seguin
5 rue des Taillandiers
75011, Paris
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox
-
The Macallan Horizon with Bentley Motors is a decadent whisky with a luxurious twist
The Macallan and Bentley Motors release ‘The Macallan Horizon’, a single malt whisky with a 180-degree twisted presentation
By Tianna Williams Published
-
Ruby Dickson’s Kim Kardashian paintings explore celebrity culture in London
Ruby Dickson’s ‘Maybe my fairy-tale has a different ending than I dreamed it would. But that’s OK’ is exhibiting at Nicoletti gallery, London
By Sam Moore Published
-
Mayfair’s Murano offers beautiful design and incisively cooked food
Angela Hartnett’s Murano celebrates 15 years of Italian supremacy in London with a fresh look by Fabled Studio
By Sofia de la Cruz Published
-
Jean Prouvé’s House of Better Days on show at Galerie Patrick Seguin in Paris
The Maison Les Jours Meilleurs, or House of Better Days, by Jean Prouvé is explored in a new show at Galerie Patrick Seguin in Paris
By Harriet Thorpe Published
-
Hauser & Wirth Paris by Laplace is a winning restoration in the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2024
Hauser & Wirth Paris by Laplace sees the architectural agency named Best Restoration Kings, breathing new life into an 1877 hôtel particulier near the Champs-Elysées
By Amy Serafin Published
-
A fire station cuts a bold figure in the city of Rennes
This fire station by LAN becomes a new landmark for Rennes, France
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
A refreshed Musée National de la Marine shows off its expanded exhibition spaces in France
Musée National de la Marine in France has been brought to the 21st century by a team comprising h2o Architectes, Snøhetta and exhibition designers Casson Mann
By Clare Dowdy Published
-
Studio Mumbai exhibition at Fondation Cartier explores craft, architecture and ‘making space’
A Studio Mumbai exhibition at Paris’ Fondation Cartier explores the trailblazing Indian practice’s inspired, hands-on approach
By Amy Serafin Published
-
AT Architectes has built a striking house in the heart of a French pine forest
Maison Au Tholonet by AT Architectes is a crisp concrete house set on a wooded site in the South of France, carefully built on the foundations of a ruin
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Richard Rogers exhibition delves into the architect’s ideas at Chateau La Coste
A new Richard Rogers exhibition created by Ab Rogers opens at the late architect’s final design, the Drawing Gallery at Chateau La Coste in France
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
A residential timber tower by Moreau Kusunoki in Paris blends minimalism and sustainability
Fast emerging French-Japanese studio Moreau Kusunoki completes a residential timber tower in Paris, making a departure from the norm in large scale housing
By Ellie Stathaki Published