Prouvé Raw Collection By Vitra and G-Star - Cite1930

Prouvé Raw Collection / Vitra and G-Star

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Prouvé Raw Collection

Prouvé RAW is a collection of seventeen design classics, which embrace the essence of Jean Prouvé’s work, while at the same time adding contemporary colours, textiles and details. This is a fantastic opportunity to own a beautiful piece of design and appreciate for years to come.

The Prouvé RAW Special Edition comprises nine designs by Jean Prouvé in exclusive versions interpreted by G‐Star RAW. The products of the Prouvé RAW Special Edition are numbered and feature a Prouvé RAW label.

Prouvé’s iconic designs have always been an inspiration to the G-Star team. His focus on balance, logic and use of pure and raw materials mirrors G-Star’s own product-approach. For many years already, his designs and original pieces have been used in G-Star offices and showrooms. The crossover project therefore naturally evolved out of G-Star’s appreciation of Jean Prouvé’s work and corresponding ideas about design.

According to G-Star’s Brand Director Shubhankar Ray, “It is a privilege for G-Star to be able to make a design intervention to the aesthetic quality of Prouvé’s iconic products and the emotion they inspire.”

A similar appreciation for Prouvé’s work is felt at Vitra. “I was blown away when I discovered Prouvé in the Seventies. Like Eames, he was no formalist, but someone who develops with a constructive idea in mind, who builds every piece in his own workshop and who is a producer as much as a designer. The first object I bought for my collection was one of his chairs”, describes Vitra chairman Rolf Fehlbaum.

Vitra works with leading contemporary designers and represents outstanding classic furniture collections, such as the works of Jean Prouvé.

The ‘Prouvé RAW’ line extends the RAW Crossover series of RAW Defender, RAW Ferry and RAW Cannondale: unique design experiments that fuse G-Star’s core DNA with that of other product manufacturers committed to innovation, technology and craftsmanship.

From October/November 2012, nine selected items from the Prouvé RAW collection will be available as a limited edition through major Vitra showrooms and dealers around the world.

Jean Prouvé’s daughter, Catherine said:

“My father loved to balance on the back legs of his chair,” recalls Catherine Prouvé of her father, Jean. “That’s the position he took to ponder over new inventions and design solutions,” she says. “He was the only one who managed to stay perfectly still on just two legs.”

This daughter’s memory offers Vitra a clue as to why two legs of Jean Prouvé’s best known chair, the Standard, are typically conic. Unlike the thin pin-like legs in this chair’s front, the pair in the back slim down towards the floor. Made from folded sheet metal, they are sturdy yet light-weight. But perhaps just as important is the way they lend themselves to more playful uses than just plain sitting.

About – Jean Prouvé:

Jean Prouvé (8 April 1901 – 23 March 1984) was a French metal worker, self-taught architect and designer. His main achievement was transferring manufacturing technology from industry to architecture, without losing aesthetic qualities. His design skills were not limited to one discipline. During his career Jean Prouvé was involved in architectural design, industrial design, structural design and furniture design.

Jean Prouvé‘s designs use a language linked to necessity and construction while simultaneously giving technically innovative objects a poetic playfulness. Generally described as one of the greatest French designers of the 20th century, Jean Prouvé (1901-1984) was an architect, an engineer and a passionate teacher, a prolific inventor, a visionary manufacturer and the founder of the Ateliers Prouvé, which was for thirty years the factory as well as a laboratory for his experimental architecture projects and innovative furniture designs. But above all Jean Prouvé was a hands-on “constructeur”, who never stopped experimenting with his designs, and was always adapting them to the spirit of the times.

Data

Name: Prouvé Raw
Type: Furniture Collection
Materials Combination: Mix / Multi Materials, Eco / Recycled / Green
Dimensions: Varies
Colour: Mix / Multi Color
Year: Varies

The people

Client / Owner / Developer: G-Star
Furniture Designer: Jean Prouvé
Manufacturer: Vitra
Text Description: © Courtesy of Vitra, domus
Images: © Vitra, G-Star