Jean Prouvé 20th-Century Design The High Life Bang for Your Buck Trial by Design Into the Wood Go Ask Adam Careful Buying and a Controversial Eviction at Design Miami

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That dealer was Eric Touchaleaume, a specialist in French design. He had dreamed of tracking down the midcentury steel-and-aluminum constructions since 1987, when he organized the first Paris exhibition of Prouve's work at his former gallery near Place de la Bastille. In the course of putting together that show, he recalls, he came across archival photographs of "mysterious Tropical Houses, of which virtually nothing was known." But he says it was not until the late 1990s, when market prices for the creations of Prouve and his contemporaries "climbed steeply and it became difficult to find stock in France," that he decided to search for the structures.

Heirs to a prefab tradition that dates back to the Bauhaus and the 1920s, Prouve's houses—no component of which is longer than 13 feet or weighs more than 220 pounds—were designed to be easily transportable and to withstand tropical hazards, like termites and searing temperatures. The designer embarked on the project with a view to gaining commissions in France's African colonies. But these never materialized, and only three houses were produced in 1951 and transported to Africa.

In 2000, Touchaleaume retrieved one from Niamey, the capital of Niger, relatively uneventfully. The real adventure that year came in recovering the two in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of the Congo, where they were originally used by the local branch of Aluminum Francais, a commercial agency established to promote the use of the metal in construction and furniture. One, about 1,500 square feet in area, housed offices; the other, about 1,900 square feet, was the director's home.

In all, Touchaleaume spent almost six months locating the structures, negotiating their sale, dismantling them and spiriting them from Brazzaville through rebel territory to the coast. After a $3 million restoration, the dealer unveiled the larger of the two on the banks of the Seine last September, during the Paris Biennale; he is putting it up for sale at Christie's New York on the fifth of this month.

The burly, balding and bestubbled Touchaleaume roars around Paris on a 1973 Kawasaki motorcycle. "His appearance matches his personality," says Art Deco expert and longtime acquaintance Jean-Marcel Camard. "Strong, massive, robust, reliable—no diplomat, but a friend you can trust. Eric's not afraid of making investments and taking risks. He's a great dealer," Camard continues, "and he has really exploded on the scene over the last four or five years."

Touchaleaume appreciates Prouve's creations for their streamlined elegance and use of metal. "Furniture bores me," he says, referring to traditional pieces. "But Prouve's work is more like sculpture. And I've always been passionate about metal. I like the industrial aesthetic, the rigor with a hint of folly."

The son of Victor Prouve, a founder of the Ecole de Nancy, Jean Prouve was born in that eastern French city in 1901 and trained as an ironworker before founding his own workshop there, in 1929. He practiced as both an architect and furniture designer, often collaborating with Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand—who, along with Prouve, Touchaleaume likes to call the "four musketeers of Design."

In 1947 Prouve opened a factory in Maxeville, just outside Nancy, to develop the Tropical Houses, lightweight buildings made of folded aluminum, a technique that he pioneered. They were a "domesticized version of aeronautical engineering," says Philippe Garner, Christie's international department head of 20th-century decorative art and design. "People couldn't get their heads around living in that kind of machine."

Locals in Africa must have thought the houses had landed from outer space, not on a cargo plane from Paris. With their sharp outlines, bright colors, inclinable sunshades in exposed aluminum and small porthole windows of deep blue glass, they look futuristic even today. "The idea that these could become kit houses for the workers, like many visionary projects," says Garner, "was ahead of its time."