6 x 6 dismountable house

At the end of the war, the urgent need to provide housing in devastated regions became evident. The intensity of the fighting, particularly in Alsace-Lorraine, made it necessary to conceive housing solutions that could be produced and assembled rapidly. Within his Ateliers, Jean Prouvé responded to this challenge through an approach based on economy of means, relying on standardized and prefabricated elements.

As Prouvé himself explained in a 1946 address to an assembly of architects, the objective was to conceive and produce true “factory-made houses.” The 6 × 6 demountable houses produced from 1944 embody this idea, employing the principle of an axial portal frame construction.

This line of research was relatively new in Prouvé’s work. It had only begun in 1939 following the construction of housing for the SCAL (Société Centrale des Alliages Légers) in Issoire. For these barracks, a central axial portal frame structure was used for the first time to support the entire building, including the façade panels. At the time, this construction method, introduced in 1939, represented a significant innovation.

Prouvé thus moved away from the principle of self-supporting structures that he had previously explored, notably in the military barracks designed for the French Army’s engineering corps in 1939, as well as in the holiday camp at Onville.

The axial portal frame system developed for the SCAL project continued to evolve during the war. Due to the shortage of metal, it was adapted for wooden production in the demountable houses built in Saint-Auban in 1942. The underlying principle, however, remained the same: a structure organized around a central axis supporting the entire house.