Maison Tropicale for Design Museum at Tate Modern

Hotelier Andre Balazs, in partnership with the Design Museum and Tate Modern, brings a house designed by architectural visionary Jean Prouve to Britain for the first time.

The prototype house, designed by the French architect Jean Prouve (1901-84), for 1950s colonial West Africa, is erected outside Tate Modern.

Maison Tropicale for Design Museum at Tate Modern is an extension of the Design Museum's exhibition Jean Prouve - The Poetics of the Technical Object and the house demonstrates the full scale and vision of Prouve's economy of design.

Visitors are be able to walk around this "flat pack" house which was originally erected in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, in 1951.

In 2000 the house was found in Brazzaville, in a dilapidated state and riddled with bullet holes.

The house was dismantled, returned to France and restored.

Jean Prouve designed and manufactured three prototype Maisons Tropicales for West Africa between 1949 and 1951.

The Brazzaville house is made from folded sheet steel and aluminium.

For ease of transport all the parts were flat, lightweight and could be neatly packed into a cargo plane.