The adaptation of JEAN PROUVÉ’s 6×6 Demountable House by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) is based on the original plans with the addition of modern living facilities including external bathroom and kitchen pods as well as a series of service trolleys providing hot water and solar-powered electricity.

Placing the pods on the outside maintains the flexibility of the original internal layout, and the trolleys ensure the house has an independent supply of water and energy so it can be built in any environment. RSHP’s design replaces six of the original wooden panels to provide a link bridge connection to each pod and an entrance of four glazed panels that bring light into the main living space and open onto a new external decking platform. The decking is controlled through a counter balance system so it can be lowered for use as an outdoor space or raised to act as a shutter to protect the glazing against extreme weather conditions.

In keeping with the original design, all components can be manually assembled and dismantled easily on site, and different panel locations can be configured to suit specific locations.

The RSHP adaptation, designed to be a perfect holiday retreat, has potential to become a blueprint for future transportable and demountable housing in keeping with Prouvé’s original vision.

Using his axial frame constructive system for the first time, the SCAL (Société Centrale des Alliages Légers – central company of light alloys) factory in Issoire (France) provided JEAN PROUVÉ with the opportunity to initiate a fruitful collaboration with the architect PIERRE JEANNERET, as well as addressing the subject of individual housing.

This major project, which was begun during the War, allowed its designers to demonstrate an architecture that was prefabricated in the workshop and then immediately assembled on site. The simple constructive language, proposed jointly by Pierre Jeanneret and Jean Prouvé, was able to adapt to the various different needs of this industrial site, evolving in line with supply problems of different materials during wartime.

For all that, the extreme circumstances in which this emergency project emerged favored the technical experimentation so dear to the architect and builder, while always maintaining their required standards in terms of building quality and user comfort.

The 8m x 12m pavilion that emerged from an ensemble of accommodation for engineers heralded the prefabricated houses designed by Jean Prouvé to shelter the masses. It was the first time his axial portal system was proposed for housing, put into production the very next year for engineers’ accommodation in Saint Auban (France), with Pierre Jeanneret and the BCC team (Bureau Central de Constructions – central building bureau, regrouping the skills of an architect’s office, an engineering consultant and a general contractor, set up by Georges Blanchon at the end of 1940 in Grenoble, with Jean Prouvé and Pierre Jeanneret).