As part of the exhibition Skyscrapers by the Roots – Reflections on Late Modernism, the MAC invites you to a walkthrough with François Dallegret, artist, architect, and sculptor, and Alessandra Ponte, author and professor at the School of Architecture at the Université de Montréal.
MAC at Place Ville Marie
Exhibition walkthrough with François Dallegret et Alessandra Ponte
François Dallegret
Trained in architecture at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris, François Dallegret has been dedicated since 1964 to interventionist design and the caustic critique of representational systems that underestimate the role of humans. By introducing self-portraits or accomplice figures, such as Reyner Banham, he reintegrates the dimension of the individual into habitat design. His works reveal the ideological processes that permeate the technological evolution of our environment.
The exhibition Réminiscences fluorescentes in 1999, at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, highlighted his urban interventions. Notably, the Parc olympique de Montréal recently commissioned a reissue of his urban furniture, thus updating the 1976 experience. The touring exhibition GOD & CO: François Dallegret Beyond the Bubble—presented in London in 2011, Los Angeles in 2016, the Yale School of Architecture Gallery in 2023, and finally in Venice, also in 2023—as well as the book published for the occasion, mark the culmination of the Art Fiction cycle.
In September 2025, the Centre Pompidou will host the presentation of a French-language publication, a sort of Art Friction manifesto, ushering in a new phase with a deliberately political turn, reflecting the artist’s firm commitment to current events.
Alessandra Ponte
Alessandra Ponte is a full professor at the École d’architecture, Université de Montréal. She has also taught at the schools of architecture at Princeton University, Cornell University, Pratt Institute in New York, ETH Zurich, and the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia. Since 2008, she has been responsible for the conception and organization of the Phyllis Lambert International Seminar, a series of colloquia held at the Université de Montréal addressing current topics in landscape and architecture. She curated the exhibition Total Environment: Montreal 1965-1975 (Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, 2009) and contributed to the exhibition and catalogue God & Co: François Dallegret Beyond the Bubble (with Laurent Stalder and Thomas Weaver, London: Architectural Association Publications, 2011). She has published extensively, including a collection of essays on North American landscapes titled The House of Light and Entropy (London: AA Publications, 2014). She contributed to the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2014 (Arctic Adaptations) and 2016 (Extraction). Since 2021, in collaboration with master’s students and research partners, she has conducted studies on information technologies and architecture in remote regions of Quebec. This research has been compiled into four volumes titled Architecture/Territoire/Information 4.0 (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024).
