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The £2.5m flat-pack home you won't find at Ikea
By Mark Blunden, Evening Standard 21.01.08More than two million people are set to visit one of the world's first "flat-pack" homes at Tate Modern.
Designed by visionary architect Jean Prouve, the conceptual Maison Tropicale was created in the Fifties as a potential answer to the shortage of adequate housing in France's African colonies. But this 46-tonne aluminium and steel house-on-stilts, shipped from America, proved too expensive to mass-market.
It was discovered riddled with bullet holes in Brazzaville, Congo, in 2000 by Parisian antiques dealer Eric Touchaleaume. It has been brought to Britain by the Design Museum and Tate Modern.
Mr Touchaleaume restored the 1951 colonial-style house in France and it was later sold at auction in New York for £2.5 million.
Mr Touchaleaume is leading a team of 11 French engineers and carpenters reassembling the structure at the South Bank. Visitors will be able to walk around it from 5 February.
