Machines de ville

For many years now the company La Machine has been creating shows featuring fascinating giant machines which delight huge audiences of young and old alike in the cities of France and around the world. Gradually, these performing machines have become permanent installations in cities around France, an integral and integrated feature of urban development.

Through four emblematic projects in Nantes, La Roche-sur-Yon, Toulouse and Calais, François Delarozière demonstrates how the elegant dynamics of this mechanical bestiary relates to space and to human performers. He speaks of the machines’ creation and charts the daily lives of the company, its members, artists, technicians and artisans and how they undertake such visionary projects of mechanical urban architecture working in tandem with local authorities.

After the book La Machine spectacle, here is Machines de ville, highlighting the machines which have slipped into people’s daily lives, churning out dreams, sparking discussion, stirring emotions and reflecting us back to our own humanity by their mere presence in the city.

Author Biography

François Delarozière is the artistic director of the La Machine theater company. Since a young age he has had a fascination for carrousels and for the mechanisms that set objects in motion. An illustrator, an inventor, a constructor, scenographer and devisor of street theater, he has been designing and supervising the creation of vast show machines for over 15 years, including for the theater company Royale de Luxe. Among the most emblematic of his masterpieces of urban scenography are the Giant, the Rhinoceros, the Little Giant Boy, the Giraffes, the Little Giant Girl and the Great Elephant, among many others. Philippe Dossal is a freelance journalist who has written for the daily newspapers Libération, La Tribune and Le Point in Nantes and author of numerous books including Jean Blaise, réenchanteur de ville (2015).