Jean Prouve Essay, Research Paper

& # 8220 ; I am merely a adult male of my clip who refuses to copy. & # 8221 ; ( Jean Prouve ) No other remark could sum up Jean Prouve so merely. He was in every sense & # 8216 ; of the clip & # 8217 ; , if non in front of it. Jean grew up surrounded by creative persons whose concern it was to do art accessible to all. This doctrine would go the model for Jean evident in his undertakings and work moralss. Prouve chiefly worked on practical and societal undertakings such as public edifices, market halls, schools, mass lodging and furniture. He was non interested in monumental architecture and private Villas. Jean Prouve was surely an of import figure in the modern motion refering himself with new stuffs, new techniques and preferring simpleness and efficiency over ornamentation and tradition. These precedences lead him to make Maison du Peuple, a landmark of modern architecture, which boasted the first modern-day drape wall.

Jean Prouve was born on April 08, 1901 in Paris. The same twelvemonth, his household moved to Nancy where his male parent, Victor Prouve and his godfather, Emile Galle, founded the & # 8220 ; L & # 8217 ; ? kale de Nancy. & # 8221 ; ( School of Nancy ) . Jean & # 8217 ; s father Victor was a painter, engraver and Emile was an Art Nouveau interior decorator. At the clip, & # 8220 ; the industrial centre of Nancy was the booming scene of a resurgence of workmanship in applied humanistic disciplines. This school came together with the purpose to do art readily accessible, to hammer a relationship between art and industry, and to joint a nexus between art and societal consciousness. The end was to do beautiful objects widely available through mass production. & # 8220 ; A sound edifice must mensurate up to the location and the manner, and the executing must be as simple and logical as possible ( & # 8230 ; ) , it must non be blocked by anything and it must be out in the unfastened ( & # 8230 ; ) , but what is indispensable is the construction ( of a piece ) of furniture, the architecture of ( a ) vase, and their precise location & # 8230 ; . & # 8221 ; These words could surely be attributed to Jean Prouve, & # 8220 ; but they are really the words of his godfather, Emile Galle, from an article he wrote in the twelvemonth 1901, the twelvemonth Jean was born. & # 8221 ; Prouve grew up surrounded by the ideals and energy of the school as he subsequently stated, & # 8220 ; I was born at the Ecole de Nancy & # 8221 ; . Jean and his siblings grew up in this environment of uninterrupted exchange of thoughts between creative persons, intellectuals, and makers. Although Jean Prouv? did non attach himself to any peculiar aestheticc, the powerful influence of & # 8220 ; L & # 8217 ; ? kale de Nancy & # 8221 ; on his work is apparent. He has said & # 8220 ; I was raised in a universe of creative persons and bookmans, a universe which nourished my head. But I was a worker, so I had perfect cognition of the work and the stuffs & # 8221 ;

Coming from this background, Prouve of course turned to a calling in design. & # 8220 ; He was fond of machinery-automobiles, aircraft and bridges-and observed that architecture was non profiting from new proficient betterments. He hence resolved to make full a demand which seemed by and large neglected and planned to go an engineer. & # 8221 ; However these programs were disrupted with the eruption of World War 1. During this period, Prouve found work as an hardwareman. Prouv? was foremost apprenticed to a blacksmith, ? stat mi Robert, and so to the metal workshop of Szabo. His preparation with these ironworkers gave Prouve experience in the workshop, a topographic point of artistic production and fabrication. Here he acquired many accomplishments and was exposed to organized labor based on the sharing of undertakings and working category conditions. Prouve opened his ain studio in Nancy, in 1923. The fabrication spirit which drove modern art was already present in the early old ages of his work. Prouve manufactured wrought-iron objects such as lamps, pendants, manus tracks and besides furniture. Even so, he decided to distance himself from a cosmetic attack. In fact, he called himself a & # 8216 ; wrought-iron worker & # 8217 ; , and non a & # 8216 ; wrought Fe creative person & # 8217 ; . & # 8220 ; At foremost the studio turned out such traditional metal points as interior and exterior wickets, stairwaies and lift cabs. Gradually, nevertheless, Prouve, who by now was professor of ironmongery at Nancy & # 8217 ; s Ecole Superieure, began to bring forth less conventional designs. & # 8221 ;

In 1929, Jean was a founding member of the Union of Modern Artists. The pronunciamento read, & # 8220 ; We like logic, balance and purity. & # 8221 ; non unlike the rules expounded by Galle at the beginning of the century. As a consequence of this brotherhood, his pattern of ironworks as an art was strengthened by a solid experience in fabricating building constituents, interior design objects and trappingss.

When Prouve started work, & # 8220 ; industrialisation had already begun to transform edifice methods: the new stuffs, steel, cast Fe and aluminium had been invented, semi-finished merchandises such as subdivisions and sheet metal were already available & # 8221 ; . This state of affairs inspired Prouve to utilize the machines to work the new stuffs. Jean Prouve became the innovator of the industrialisation of edifice building. The finished edifice elements that left his mill had merely to be put into place. He was ever in front of others, coming up with advanced solutions merely by being up to day of the month. Prouve besides put great importance on put to deathing an thought instantly. He emphasized this many times, & # 8220 ; I hate to pull things unless Im traveling to construct them. In my mill, we would turn an thought into world instantly, be it a house or furniture & # 8230 ; It & # 8217 ; s no usage. Thingss have to me made. & # 8221 ; Jean had a really practical pattern. He was well-known for working really closely with the all the workingmans, taking and sing their sentiments and holding good relationships with them. As Sulzer explains, & # 8220 ; The J. Prouve workshops & # 8230 ; were founded on squad spirit and the participants & # 8217 ; sense of duty, created intelligently conceived merchandises in short tallies with the really best tools the age could supply, ( and ) were antiphonal to altering demands & # 8221 ; Due to his rich background and experience Prouve was named many things including artist/craftsman and architect/engineer. Sir Norman Foster describes that it is, & # 8220 ; really hard to categorize him & # 8230 ; technocrat/visionary, pioneer/teamworker, innovator/construcotor, all the rubrics are applicable, even though they are in contradiction with each other & # 8230 ; Jean Prouve is & # 8230 ; for me the inspiration that shows how art and engineering can be reunified. & # 8221 ;

Jean was known to rede new designers to work in the mill. This came from his personal experience. It was his direct knowlegde of stuffs, and the machines used to work them that was the beginning of his success. After all, Prouve did non concentrate on doing something merely beautiful, but he strove to better things. Jean Nouvel descibes Prouve really good, & # 8220 ; He merely has the great aspiration to face the basic. He makes of simpleness, simple, logic, honesty his values. It is rare to see such a dramatic instance of moralss bring forthing an aesthetic. An aesthetic consequence with no grant & # 8230 ; Prouve acted as though aesthetics did non be & # 8230 ; His satisfaction came from holding resolved a job. Having resolved it constructively, economically, intellectually. & # 8221 ; He realized this could merely be possible by utilizing new techniques and new stuffs. New building methods allowed non merely for the devising of things more easy and expeditiously but most significantly, for the object itself to be more efficient. This is why Jean concerned himself with being & # 8216 ; of his clip & # 8217 ; ; because it was the clip of the modern motion. Modern architecture, the international manner or functionalism as it may be called, made a witting effort to absorb modern engineering. Technical advancement in the development of stuffs was apparent in the building of the Crystal Palace by Joseph Paxton in London, 1851. In following old ages iron, steel, and glass determined the signifier of many edifices, but irrelevant decoration persisted. It was every bit tardily as 1889, when the Eiffel Tower was confronted with a public non ready to accept pure construction as beautiful. Indeed, Prouve belongs to this tradition of the daring enterprisers, applied scientists and builders including: Telford, Paxton, Bogardis, Eiffel, Freussinet and Nervi. As he states, & # 8220 ; For me, there is no architecture without structure. & # 8221 ; A concern of the modern designers became the disclosure of the construction and exposing its beauty. Another thought explored by the modern designers get downing with Art Nouveau in Europe was the construct of rhythmic flow of interior infinite and the eliminating of stiff room divisions. & # 8220 ; By 1920 the interrelatedness of constructing type with stuffs and map was widely accepted. The construct of edifices as volumes enclosed by monolithic stuffs had given manner to a concentration on infinite supported or enclosed by visible radiation, thin stuffs. The thought of enclosure was de-emphasized, so that structural elements themselves came into focus. & # 8221 ; There is no uncertainty the influence these constructs had on Jean Prouve. We can see them evident in one of his land interrupting early plants, the Maison du Peuple at Clichy.

& # 8220 ; Are our towns, our schools, our public edifices and our houses worthy of our mechanical and atomic age? & # 8221 ; , Prouve inquiries. Of class he argues that they are. The Maison du Peuple at Clichy built in 1938/39 remains even toda

Y, an outstanding advanced proficient accomplishment in the application of sheet steel. The edifice was made in coaction with the designers Beaudoin, Lods and Bodiansky. The edifice could be described as a low rise, square marquee with a glass frontage on the first floor and a sheet metal frontage on the upper floor. For this undertaking, Prouve is credited with planing the first truly modern drape wall. This term describes an external, non-supporting wall. The drape wall is a merchandise of modern architecture that Prouve can take recognition for. Curtain walls, now in common usage, are made up of standardised, factory-made modular elements and erected on the site. The wall’s merely map is to divide the inside from the outside environment. In the structural sense of the term, the drape wall allows for the usage of pre-fabricated elements which, after installing, necessitate no farther traditional type of managing. The wall at Maison du Peuple is made wholly of sheet metal. Prouve’s “innovation took the signifier of corrugated metal sheets exactly bent into form during the industry ; this gained him a repute for punctilious attending to detail.” The stuffs used in the edifice had significance non merely technologically but besides politically, “The Maison du Peuple…explored the impression of transparence as a mark of societal emancipation, but in the linguistic communication of steel girders, traveling constituents and glass…Like Prouve’s somewhat earlier Roland Garros Aero-Club at Buc, the Maison du Peuple worked with a direct aesthetic of bolts, articulations, and connexions. The ‘normative’ modern solution of the steel skeleton was inflected to convey the impression of an classless instrument. Prouve’s edifices welded together the Gallic structural Rationalist tradition with the populist mill of civilization. It may be that ‘brutal’ look of metallic fiction was intended to show a ‘social realism’ of a sort. But the entirety was however composed with a grade of formality that kept it within the bounds of institutional conventions. It was more extremist in its content than in its form.” At this clip, Prouve refused the steel tubing technique which came out of the Bauhaus. He liked the forces being expressed through the construction of the crook Fe and believed it offered a dynamism that could non be obtained with a tubing. He derived his inspiration from sheet metal, “bent, pressed, compressed so welded” . Prouve’s building signifiers display an economic system of stuffs and agencies. His aesthetic is one of opposition. Therefore the lines of force, tenseness, and the point of equilibrium consequence in a dynamic aesthetic. But Prouve rejected the academic ‘aesthetic’ and alternatively developed a echt industrial aesthetic. This aesthetic refering the stuffs, forces and dynamism can be seen in the illustration of the frontage at the Maison du Peuple. The springs used for emphasizing the metal sheets play a really of import portion in the concluding ocular consequence achieved since they equalize the surface plane and tend to leave a dual convex form to them.” Although Prouve had this committedness to making organize “both from the system of fiction and from the look of the agencies of support placed him in a structural-Rationalist line of descent running bac K to Viollet-le-Duc, there was besides an artisan side to his work which made him a part-heir of Art Nouveau.” Prouve was dedicated to the ideal of transforming engineering into socially serviceable mechanisms evident in his work at Clichy. He was interested in humanising engineering and his thought of construction was based on a natural construct of limbs, brass knuckss, tendons, articulations and connexions. At a clip when the best modern designers such as Mies van der Rohe used semi-finished merchandises ( pressed steel, level sheeting… ) In their architecture, Jean worked these stuffs himself and hence was able to conserve on metal and create plastic signifiers of a sort so unknown to architecture. He was able to make this non merely because he had a good apprehension of the stuffs but besides because he was like most applied scientists and industrialists who were non afraid of new signifiers. Although Prouve used finished merchandises, they had already undergone much polish and designing by him. “At a clip when Le Corbusier’s dense, sculptural edifices in strengthened concrete were ruling one side of Gallic architecture, Prouve reopened an alternate path of about elaborate metallic woodworking. The consequence of this lingered on, attesting itself in the steel and glass architecture of the 1980s in France”

The edifice was a & # 8216 ; Community House & # 8217 ; which provided multi-purpose infinite. It is known as a market-hall but could besides let for a film and/or talk room. The ground why the infinite could let for so many different intents is because of its mastermind design. Many parts of the structural system could be moved to let for different interior utilizations. Even the roof was variable. Prouve created an unfastened program in this edifice which had been initiated by Wright in the U.S. and the advocates of Art Nouveau in Europe. They introduced the construct of rhythmic flow of interior infinite, extinguishing stiff room divisions. & # 8220 ; By 1920 the interrelatedness of constructing type with stuffs and map was widely accepted. The construct of edifices as volumes enclosed by monolithic stuffs had given manner to a concentration on infinite supported or enclosed by visible radiation, thin stuffs. The thought of enclosure was de-emphasized, so that structural elements themselves came into focus. & # 8221 ; Gropius and Le Corbusier were among the modern designers that promoted the unfastened program. Prouve went even further to buoy up all the stuffs used in the construction and let for thin, light dividers. Although this was a difficult construct to present in Europe and North America, unfastened insides with really light edifice stuffs and movable dividers was an ancient tradition in China, perchance the beginning of inspiration. & # 8220 ; Movable dividers secured by springs were produced every bit early as 1930. & # 8221 ; However, this was likely the first patent taken out on this, now common, technique.

It is no uncertainty that Prouve influenced the great modern designers really much. He is known as a innovator in Gallic lightweight ferro vitreous building. He is besides really good known for his parts to the art and engineering of prefabricated metal building. Prouv? pioneered new structural techniques that would allow the efficient and cheap building of edifices with prefabricated constituents while retaining architectural quality and individualism. From this one undertaking entirely, we know that he had a profound affect on constructing engineering by presenting the drape wall. When Frank Llyod Wright visited the Maison du Peuple shortly after it was finished & # 8220 ; he named Jean Prouv? as the discoverer and instigator of the drape wall. & # 8221 ; Le Corbusier admired Prouve really much for he saw him as the architect/engineer which he believed would be the leader and Jesus of future architecture, as so they were. Le Corbusier described him as & # 8220 ; indissolubly an designer and an applied scientist, since everything he touches and designs instantly takes on an elegant beautiful signifier while he finds superb solutions to resistance and manufacturing. & # 8221 ; Renzo Piano describes the lesson of Prouve, & # 8220 ; the cardinal truth that one must non divide the caput and the manus, the thought and the agencies of recognizing it, that architecture is a affair of edifice, non pulling, and that it must be a deep apprehension of stuffs that gives rise to its signifiers & # 8230 ; & # 8221 ; Prouve faced a battle and questioned the traditional manners of building and the conventional stuffs. His purpose was to accomplish the highest grade of economic system in stuffs and means to run into the demands of the largest possible figure of people. He explored furniture design and such important undertakings of the epoch as mass-housing. Prouve considered himself of the times but in world he was excessively advanced for his clip. He really developed a loanblend ; utilizing the most advanced engineerings with a craftsman manner of planing. For this ground, Jean Prouve remains a important representative and instigator of modern architecture in the twentieth century. A adult male of action more than of rhetoric, throughout his life he applied his ain solution, & # 8220 ; be a adult male of the times and uncompromising & # 8221 ;

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