Directed by Lionel Quantin, 2016. Duration: 30'. © Société Nationale de Radiodiffusion Radio France, France Culture.
Jean Prouvé: I am a workman who carries out his trade, quite simply, and I wanted to try to build with the most modern means I could find at the time at which I was working. That was what interested me. Every era should mark its time and I feel that at the moment nothing in architecture is marking its time, other than exception. And I think that it’s upsetting that it is exception. Everything that is done for the general public is ugly, it’s awful, it’s deceptive, it’s fraudulent. That is what struck me as serious. That we don’t know what it’s made of. We make everything out of whatever materials as long as it looks like something familiar. In summary it’s advocating formalism, and to me formalism is the negation of architecture.