Mass-produced apartment building, 1955
Beginning in 1951 Jean Prouvé’s Maxéville plant was host to young architecture internees. In direct connection with the workshop, they developed personal projects and brought fresh impetus to the experiments in progress, notably introducing the use of concrete for frames. The aluminum and reinforced concrete AlBa house designed by Maurice Silvy in 1952 reused the central portal frame principle while adding a major new concept: grouping all the domestic functions in a single loadbearing core, which meant a gain in living space. The aluminum louver panels of the envelope were intended for mass production so as to cut costs even further. Several variants on the same principle were researched, using different materials and shaping methods. The same design was applied simultaneously to a dry-mounted apartment block, comprising a minimal number of prefabricated steel elements, including the domestic blocks and the stairwells, which were superposed to form semi-structural columns.