In 1950 the Ateliers Jean Prouvé design office worked on a new variant of the "semi-metallic" chairs -with metal frame and wooden seat- that would combine the principle of the prewar metal-framed chair no. 4 with the mounting systems of the earlier wooden models. The frame comprised two pressed steel rear uprights of "uniform strenght", to which were welded the curved tubes of the front legs, with braces holding them together.

The Métropole no. 305 chair, that was marketed a few months after the knockdown model, differed from the previous one in the use and the methods of attachment of the metal components: a tubular brace connected the pressed steel rear uprights, to whose interior the tubes of the front legs were welded.

A thousand of these chairs were made at the Maxéville factory in 1951. Distributed, then made by Steph Simon until 1969, this model is most certainly one of the finest examples of Jean Prouvé's project for mass production.

This exemplar presented is in red lacquered and is in an overall very good condition.