Description
Jean Prouvé’s family home in Southern Corsica: shedding light on a well-kept secret
This holiday home was built on a hillside by the builder Jean Prouvé and his architect son Claude Prouvé, at the request of Dr Pierre Gauthier, husband of his daughter Françoise, to accommodate the family. It overlooks a spectacular Mediterranean panorama all the way down to the sea, and offers an ideal setting for contemplation.
Set in 5,000 sqm of landscaped grounds punctuated by granite boulders and planted with numerous Mediterranean species, including cork oaks, olive trees, arbutus and myrtle, this house spans 167 sqm over two levels.
The main level of 101 sqm on the ground floor comprises a pleasant living area with lounge, dining room and open-plan kitchen, as well as a sleeping area with three bedrooms and two shower rooms. A thick partition with plenty of wooden storage units separates the living area from the sleeping area.
The design of the wardrobes is based on the principles of the designer Charlotte Perriand, who worked on many of the engineer’s projects, including the Villa Seynave. Sliding walls open up the spaces to a terrace suspended above the landscape.
The lower garden level houses a 33 m² independent studio with living room, bedroom area and shower room, plus a large garage.
The interior space, with its white walls, curved ceiling of Rousseau laminated wood panels and terracotta tiled floor, offers a warm atmosphere. The glazed windows running around the top of the living space overlook the vegetation and provide light throughout the day, while being protected from the sun’s rays by the overhanging roof. The main level can open onto the outside on either side, allowing you to modulate the sunlight and ventilation of the spaces, as well as the relationship with the garden and the view.
The house enjoys an unspoilt location high up in the popular coastal area of Sainte Lucie de Porto-Vecchio, in southern Corsica. It offers magnificent views of the Alta Rocca mountains, which tumble into the gulf.
An unspoilt beach is around 10 minutes’ walk away, and the beaches of Sainte Lucie and Pinarellu, bathed in the crystal-clear waters for which they are famous, are also within easy reach.
Figari airport is around 45 minutes away by car.
A haven of peace nestled in the Corsican maquis
Jean Prouvé designed this house for his daughter Françoise at the request of her husband, Doctor Pierre Gauthier, for whom he had already built a metal house in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges (Maison Gauthier, 1962, listed as a historic monument). An admirer of his father-in-law’s work, Pierre Gauthier asked him to design this holiday home in Corsica, to accommodate all generations of the family during the summer months.
Jean Prouvé fell in love with the site and camped there for several summers before choosing the building site for its exceptional landscape qualities. Inspired by the evocative power of the site and its thousand-year-old granite rocks, with the help of his son Claude, he set the house in the heart of unspoilt Mediterranean nature.
The famous builder spent many summers there, surrounded by his family and friends, lulled by an ideal of simplicity and pared-down living. Later, Claude Prouvé built a modular wooden dwelling on the adjoining land, inspired by the tepee model, which has since been destroyed.
Concrete base and load-bearing cupboards
This project stands out from Jean Prouvé’s best-known housing projects, which are characterised by their structural lightness and removable nature – such as the Métropole house, which uses a metal axial portal frame, or the Alba house, with its central load-bearing core. The Corsican project is based on a more traditional construction principle: a white-painted concrete base shelters the garage and anchors the building to the slope of the land. This base accommodates a structure with load-bearing steel cupboards, developed in 1951, into which the house’s storage units are fitted. The north and south facades are made of lightweight prefabricated panels, inserted between stiffening posts.
This choice of construction is reminiscent of the masonry walls of the Coque house, presented at the Salon des Arts ménagers in Paris in 1951, an example of which can still be seen in Meudon. The design of the roof is reminiscent of the Standard house (1949), with its double-sloped, low-sloped folded aluminium sections.
Jean Prouvé, the builder
“There is no difference between building a piece of furniture and building a house”Jean Prouvé, 1971
As an architect, engineer and designer, Jean Prouvé left a unique mark on the history of architecture and construction.
An ironmonger in Nancy during his early years, Jean Prouvé became a “builder” in 1930, quickly moving away from decorative ironwork towards industrial furniture adapted to the technical advances of the 20th century. He used metal for the finishing work on projects in collaboration with the modern architects of his time: Eugène Beaudoin and Marcel Lods for La maison du peuple in Clichy-sur-Seine, and Pierre Jeanneret for a model of a detachable pavilion (8X8, 1941).
With standardised construction through the assembly of prefabricated parts, Jean Prouvé reached the realm of domestic architecture. The disaster caused by the Second World War raises the need to rebuild housing on a large scale and at lower cost.In this emergency context, the Ministry of Reconstruction and Urban Planning commissioned several pavilions from Jean Prouvé to experiment with the system of houses assembled from machined parts in the Maxéville (Nancy) workshop, where he experimented with folded sheet metal, which became the symbol of his technical genius.
In 1949, Jean Prouvé built the Métropoles, a series of 25 homes constructed using a fully prefabricated process. The central portal frame structure was reused in the industrialised houses of Meudon, built in the Paris suburbs with his brother Henri and the architect André Sive. The pilot development included ten Standard houses, called “Métropole”, with a stone wall and base. Throughout his career, Jean Prouvé built a number of villas that are the most accomplished illustration of the synthesis between industry, furniture and the construction system, most of which are now protected as Historic Monuments.
Technical info
Asking price: €2,900,000
Fees included and payable by the vendor.
Full ownership
Property tax 2024: €480
Photos : © all rights reserved – ADAGP 2024
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