on the block: la Maison Tropicale (Jean Prouve)

ref: http://mail.architexturez.net/+/In-Enaction/archive/msg00720.shtml

Tomorrow, the Maison Tropicale, a small aluminum-paneled house built in 
1951 by Jean Prouvé, a French designer and the current court favorite of 
well-heeled contemporary art and design collectors internationally, is 
being opened to the public for preview in Long Island City. Christie’s, 
the auction house, will offer it for sale on June 5. The presale 
estimate is $4 million to $6 million.

It’s cash and carry. The structure is a kit of metal parts, like an Ikea 
piece, but bigger. It was conceived by Prouvé as a utopian prototype for 
prefabricated housing for French colonial officials working in Africa. 
Eric Touchaleaume, a French antiques dealer, bought the house and two 
others in 2000 — the only three produced, andwhich actually made the 
plane trip to the Congo and Niger in the 1940s and ’50s. He then took 
them apart and shipped them back to France.

Mr. Touchaleaume has said he is selling the Maison Tropicale reassembled 
in Queens to finance a Prouvé museum, which will travel in another of 
the three Maisons Tropicales. The house’s riverside preview site, 
directly to the south of the Queensboro Bridge, is owned by Silvercup 
Studios and is being developed as a $1 billion complex with two towers 
of luxury residences — a more New York kind of utopia.

The Maison is also plug-and-play: there was never any plumbing, and it 
is wired for electricity. It ships in six containers. Christie’s is 
compiling a short list of potential bidders with substantial properties 
in Mustique, Antigua, the Hamptons — name your playground — who might 
like a 59-foot-by-32-foot--by-16-foot-tall folly/outdoor 
sculpture/guesthouse/vintage metal toy to park on the lawn, with a 
designer label attached.

cont'd....
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/nyregion/16house.html?_r=1&oref=slogin