This Thursday, 21 October, Paris’ Pavillon de l’Arsenal gallery opens ‘L’Empreinte de l’Habitat’ (‘Housing footprint), an exhibition of a hundred years of architectural projects, among which are some that owe their reputation to the architects’ understanding of how to take into consideration the impact of their creations on the surrounding environment.
Among the great architects highlighted in this exhibition, JEAN PROUVÉ and PIERRE JEANNERET are represented, thanks to the participation of Galerie Patrick Seguin, by the 1942 BCC demountable house, archetype par excellence of the different architectural experimentations in lightweight structures in industrialized countries.
Carbon imprint, diminishing quantities of natural resources, and limited space, were all considerations that Jean Prouvé and Pierre Jeanneret managed to incorporate at the heart of their continuous research to improve their constructive systems.
Between 1941 and 1943, limited availability of steel led Jean Prouvé and Pierre Jeanneret to respond to the demand for housing with a version made primarily in wood. The use of the axial portal frame, designed by Jean Prouvé in 1938, allowed for great freedom in spatial organization within the structure by freeing the home of predefined partitions. This ingenuity made it possible to optimize the use of a material by changing the way an existing technology was exploited.
The BCC demountable house designed in 1942 by Jean Prouvé and Pierre Jeanneret holds an important place in the quest for lightweight and modularity in the new ideal of housing between the 1920s and the 2020s.
