Apparently 2013 is the year of rebuilds of home designs by famous 20th-century minds over at Design Miami. Not only has Louis Vuitton revived a 1934 beach house design of the late, great Charlotte Perriand, but collector Patrick Seguin, whose Paris gallery is full of 20th-century furniture and architecture, has actually packed an entire house with him for his trip to Miami. See, it's no secret that Seguin has got 17 (17!) restored houses by famed French designer Jean Prouvé (his furniture is coveted by Calvin Klein and design moonlighter Ellen Degeneres alike) in his back pocket, so for this year's design showing Seguin disarticulated one of them, a 689-square-foot prefab structure, send it by sea (in 10 crates!) to be rebuilt and paraded in Miami.
This particular abode was one of two 1945 Prouvé designs, which he conceived to be affordable prefab spaces—way ahead of the curve on this one—following France's housing crisis in the post-war days. What happened to the second one? Prouvé used it as his office, and it's now a historical monument.
It's no surprise that Prouvé was something of a pioneer for prefab; according to Inhabitat, Prouvé's "main achievement was transferring manufacturing technology from industry to architecture without compromising aesthetics," a philosophy shared by many of his French contemporaries, including Le Corbusier. Anyway, the Times astutely points out that seeing the place in a Southern Florida context dredges up dreams of a "high-status pool house." How high status exactly? Well, it's got a $2.5M price tag, so best save it for the well-heeled design obsessives, shall we?
· In Miami, a House Comes to Visit [NYT via Curbed Miami]
· The detachable 8 × 8 Casa Jean Prouvé will be open for the first time in the Galerie Patrick Seguin [Platforma Arquitectura]
· Jean Prouve's Maison 8x8 Pioneered Affordable Prefab Design Way Back in 1948 [Inhabitat]
· All Pre-Fab Housing posts [Curbed National]