God & Co: François Dallegret. Beyond the Bubble

François Dallegret was one of the most colourful figures in the French and Canadian artistic and architectural avant garde of the 1960s and 1970s. He came to fame largely through his drawing «Environment Bubble» in Reyner Banham’s much-published article «A Home Is Not a House» as well as the many machines and apparatuses, meticulously drawn using the Graphos pen, that were published in leading journals of architecture, art and technology from the 1950s onwards. In Dallegret’s world these imaginary machines encompass every area and form of life: alongside cars and rockets there are interactive dictating machines, art, cooking and literature generating machines, and machines for living, exhibiting or dancing. The French Montreal-based artist’s oeuvre also includes numerous design objects as well as various graphic works and interior designs. Dallegret’s production is not simply an exercise in technical representation; rather, it is a critical yet indulgent commentary on architecture and its increasing appropriation by machines and apparatuses during the 1950s and 1960s.

The exhibition by the AA London in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Laurent Stalder, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zürich presents Dallegret’s work through drawings, plans, photographs, films and a series of small objects dating from 1957 and after. Parallel to the exhibition a catalogue is published with texts by Alessandra Ponte, Laurent Stalder and Thomas Weaver.

Further locations:
ETH Zürich, 4 May to 24 May 2012