Material experiences. Design for energy efficiency

Jean Prouvé (1901-1984) represents the overcoming of the distance between architecture and industry that the modern movement, despite its dream of Taylorization of construction, could not solve and whose validity we would like to analyze through the analysis of some contemporary projects. Prouvé, from a postartesanal point of view, established a new operative of the project where the architectural sequence is based on a collective process of collaboration with industry. It affects not only the production but also the organization of work, and the strategy necessary to face the open challenges of the project. Its development is guided by the industrial fabric, which goes directly from the sketch to the prototype, corrected and improved, after which the implementation plan is carried out. The process, whose fundamental scenario is the building site, is nourished by teamwork and the encouragement of individual initiative over mechanical and sectorized work. The result of this collaboration between architecture and industry is, contrary to what it might seem, ‘anti-industrial’.This sort of artisanal empiricism, which integrates industry in the process of defining the architecture, is what guides the conception and the construction process of these material experiences to express this collaboration through a contemporary and high-tech image that collects the cultural and industrial heritage of a territory. Let’s analyze them to point out their value.