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Open house exhibition of pioneering kit home
Mark Blunden, Evening Standard17 Jan 2008
One of the world's first flat-pack homes is set to become a landmark on the riverside beside Tate Modern.
The Fifties home designed by pioneering architect Jean Prouvé was last seen in New York, where it was bought at auction in May for almost $5 million (£2.5 million) by hotel tycoon André Balazs.
Now hundreds of sections that form the Maison Tropicale have been shipped from the US for a Design Museum exhibition at Tate Modern.
A team of 11 experts is re-assembling the three-bedroom, 46-tonne steel and aluminum house on the South Bank. The colonial-style building sits on stilts and has 81 adjustable panels to circulate cool air.
Three Maison Tropicales were exported to Congo and Niger in the late Forties and early Fifties to address a shortage of civic buildings and housing.
But the example at Tate Modern was found abandoned and riddled with bullet holes in Brazzaville, Congo, in 2000. It was bought by antiques dealer Eric Touchaleaume, who restored it in France for sale in the US.
The house exhibit extends the Design Museum's current show, Jean Prouvé: The Poetics Of The Technical Object.
Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic said: "Jean Prouvé invented British hi-tech architecture. He shaped the careers of Richard Rogers, Norman Foster and a generation of others."
The Prouvé house will be open from 5 February until 13 April.
