Last chance to see - La Maison Ferembal

Renowned architect Jean Nouvel has restored and adapted 'The Ferembal House'; a pre-fab structure originally built in 1948 by French architect Jean Prouvé's practice as offices for a factory in the French town of Nancy.

Miraculously surviving the destruction of the factory thirty years later when a knowledgeable local saved the house from the same fate, the structure was rescued by French gallery owner Patrick Seguin in 1983. The painstaking restoration process involving Nouvel began in 2007, and the resulting adaptation of the House - which Seguin now estimates is worth around eight million euros - formed part of the Parisian Design and Architecture Festival  Fiac 2010. The project will be on view to the public through a collaboration between Gallerie Patrick Seguin and The Gagosian Gallery at the Octagonal Basin of the Tuileries Gardens until the 6th December 2010. (Seguin is also the curator of the Gagosian's inaugural  Jean Prouvé: Architecture exhibition in their new Paris Gallery, on view until 23 December 2010). 

The Ferembal House consists of five frames set on a pressed steel floor. Held together with ridge beams, the structure supports its aluminium roofing slabs. Originally a second floor structure on a masonry base, it now stands as a one-storey house. The addition of a new staircase, designed by Nouvel, is testament to the attention paid to the underlying construction techniques of an architect celebrated for his innovative production methods: Prouvé famously believed that “in their construction there is no difference between a piece of furniture and a house.”

The project is not the first time that Nouvel and Seguin have come together: the offices of Galerie Patrick Seguin, which exhibits 20th century furniture and architecture by such greats as Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and, of course, Jean Prouvé, were designed by the architect, who is also currently the architect manager at the gallery. 

Catherine Hudson