Tomorrow, the Maison Tropicale, a small aluminum-paneled house built in 1951 by Jean Prouvé, a French designer and the current court favorite of well-heeled contemporary art and design collectors internationally, is being opened to the public for preview in Long Island City. Christie’s, the auction house, will offer it for sale on June 5. The presale estimate is $4 million to $6 million.

La Maison Tropicale, a movable metal house on stilts by French modernist designer Jean Prouve, sold for $4.97 million last night at Christie's International in New York, more than twice the price per area of a Park Avenue apartment.

The graceful yet industrial-looking green-and-yellow house cost $5,028 per square foot for 988 square feet of usable space. It had a presale estimate of $4 million to $6 million. The seller was French dealer Eric Touchaleaume.

``I just love Prouve,'' said tanned hotelier Andre Balazs who bought the house and said he hasn't decided what he will do with it. Of one thing was he certain: ``It belongs back in the tropics.''

The 1950-51 residence set a Prouve auction record, topping the $680,000 paid in 2004 at Sotheby's for a pair of green steel doors with the designer's signature porthole windows.

The Maison Tropicale is the third house to be sold at auction as an art object. In 1989, Sotheby's sold a 1950 Philip Johnson-designed Manhattan townhouse for $3.5 million. (In 2000, the same house was auctioned at Christie's for $11.1 million.) In 2003, Sotheby's sold Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's 1951 glass Farnsworth house in Plano, Illinois for $7.5 million.

Prouve's aluminum and steel home was designed for French colonists living in Brazzaville, now the capital of the Republic of the Congo. It is considered an important example of prefabricated modernist housing.

Moving House

Christie's erected the house on an industrial stretch of land on the banks of the East River in Long Island City, Queens, allowing it to be viewed from May 17 to June 4 -- a rare Christie's exhibit that required portable toilets.

``It's not like a conventional piece of real estate,'' said Philippe Garner, Christie's head of 20th century decorative arts and design. ``There is the added value that it can be taken and set up anywhere. It comes with its passport and is ready to go.''

The house sale came at the end of a 111-lot auction of Touchaleaume's furniture and decorative objects, by Prouve and other midcentury designers and architects who experimented with modernist forms and materials. They included Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret.

The remaining pieces in the sale, including sturdy institutional furniture designed for schools, hospitals and museums, raised $3.35 million, close to the presale estimate $3.5 million. Five lots failed to sell.

Rust and Bullet Holes

About eight years ago, Touchaleaume traveled to the Republic of the Congo and bought three prototype tropical houses that Prouve had shipped to the French colony. They were in dismal condition, rusting, inhabited by squatters and riddled with bullet holes from civil wars.

He sold one to American collector and former commodities trader Robert Rubin, who restored and donated his house to the Centre Pompidou in Paris. ``This price validates the other one,'' said Rubin after the sale, speaking of the house he donated.

Touchaleaume renovated the second house which sold last night. He plans to use the proceeds to restore the third house and fund a Prouve study center, according to Christie's.

Jean Prouve, who died in 1984 at 82, devoted himself to the application of industrial materials for mass-produced furnishings and architecture.

``He was such an innovator,'' said New York gallerist and adviser Cristina Grajales. ``Even now he feels more current than ever and has inspired so many young designers.''

Christie's also sells real estate through Christie's Great Estates, a network of 850 real estate offices in 35 countries. The unit sold more than $125 billion of properties in 2006.

(Lindsay Pollock writes on the art market for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writers of this story: Lindsay Pollock at lindsaypollock@yahoo.com

Last Updated: June 6, 2007 00:01 EDT