 | This detail is of a watercolor by Lili Bates of an Amur Honeysuckle, one of the invasive plants in Connecticut. Peabody Museum director Michael Donoghue is one of the world's foremost experts on the honeysuckle family. |
A prefabricated metal house created by French designer Jean Prouvé and recently transported from its home in the Congo Republic will be the subject of a two-part exhibition at the School of Architecture.
One part of "Jean Prouvé: A Tropical House" will be on view Feb. 14-May 6 within the gallery of the Art and Architecture (A&A) Building, 180 York St. The second part will be on view mid-April through June outside the A&A Building.
Less known to the public than his contemporaries Charles Eames and Marcel Breuer, Prouvé has only recently been acknowledged as one of the most influential European designers of the 20th century. Prouvé, whose output ranged from household furnishings to industrial buildings and residential homes, was known for his signature use of industrial metals like sheet steel and aluminum.
The School of Architecture exhibition is organized around a building Prouvé constructed in 1951 as a prototype for inexpensive, readily assembled housing that could be easily transported to France's African colonies. Fabricated in Prouvé's French workshops, the Tropical House -- as it is known -- was carried in the cargo hold of an Air France plane to Africa. It was erected in the town of Brazzaville and remained there for 50 years. In 1999, retired commodities trader, rare car collector and Yale alumnus Robert M. Rubin had the Tropical House disassembled, packed up and shipped to France, where it was painstakingly restored.
The Yale exhibition is the first public display of the house outside of France. A 400-square-foot end section of the house -- approximately one-fourth of the entire structure -- will be erected inside the gallery of the A&A Building. The open end of this section will face into the main exhibition space.
Also on display inside the gallery will be photographs by Mark Lyon, plans, artifacts and a short film documenting the Tropical House from its return to France and the completion of its restoration last summer. Related Prouvé objects, such as furniture made for export to the tropics, will also be on view. The exhibition was organized and designed by Dean Sakamoto, director of exhibitions at the School of Architecture.
In mid-April the entire house will be erected on the vacant lot adjoining the A&A Building. A barrier fence to the building site will be designed with viewing portals to permit daily observation of the house -- from its assembly, which is expected to take five men two weeks to complete, to its full reconstruction. The house will be visible from York Street and from windows of the A&A Building.
"The opportunity to insert a full, self-supporting section of the Tropical House -- which is the pinnacle of metallic architecture -- inside Paul Rudolph's equally iconic exercise in concrete, and then to put the buildings side by side, in full view of the Louis Kahn Gallery of Art, is amazing and unprecedented," says Rubin, who is serving as the show's curator.
"Students of the architecture school, having lived for two months with an in-depth exhibition on the Tropical House, will be able to observe it going up during its two-week construction window," adds the alumnus. "After all, for Prouvé, the process of construction and assembly was integral to a building's design, especially where the program was to fabricate it in France and build it in Africa. What better way to get inside the mind of Jean Prouvé?"
The accompanying catalogue, published with funding from the French Cultural Embassy, will present antecedents to the Tropical House in Prouvé's work and help to place the designer within the larger context of 20th-century architectural history. The catalog will also feature an essay by Rubin.
Rubin will give a lecture, titled "Jean Prouvé: Legend and Legacy," on Monday, April 4, 6:30 p.m. in Hastings Hall of the A&A Building. The talk is free and open to the public.
The A&A Gallery, located at 180 York St., is open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday- Friday and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday.
T H I S
Designer's metal 'Tropical House'
will be spotlight of exhibition
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