GOD & CO: Francois Dallegret beyond the bubble

Opening in November 2011, the AA School of Architecture will present an exhibition of the work of the French Montreal-based artist and architect François Dallegret (1937–). Dallegret’s own life and work denies anything so predictable as a neat synopsis, but in essence his work – beginning in Paris in the late 1950s and early 60s, and later taking in New York and Montreal – absorbs everything from intricate line drawings for a series of astrological vehicles and designs for a number of machines (from those that assist in cooking a meal to others that generate literature) to the ‘A Home Is Not a House’ collaboration with the critic Reyner Banham; a drugstore/gallery in Montreal; proposals for a new Montreal Palais Métro; designs for chairs, more cars and yet more machines; a film collaborative set up to shoot a western; contributions to the Montreal 67 Expo; bars of soap; subversive credit cards; ‘ironique’ villas and light installations.