Michel Dallaire joins PROVENCHER_ROY
The firm PROVENCHER_ROY is very pleased to welcome Michel Dallaire, a pioneer in industrial design in Quebec and Canada, as a member of its group. He will continue to work in industrial design and contribute to various multidisciplinary projects as a senior consultant.
“It is an honour and a privilege to have such an exceptional collaborator as Michel, who has contributed so much to contemporary Quebec for over 40 years. He changed the way we think about the value of design by creating high visibility products such as the Olympic torch for the 1976 Games and Bixi, the Quartier international street furniture, the furnishings at the Grande Bibliothèque and the Bourgie Concert Hall, for which we did the architecture, as well as utilitarian objects all over the world,” noted Claude Provencher, architect and senior partner.
Michel Dallaire studied at the Institut des arts appliqués de Montréal (1959-1963) and Konstfackskolan, the Graduate School of Industrial Arts in Stockholm, Sweden (1964-1965). He then specialized in design management at the école des Hautes études Commerciales de Montréal (1972) and polymer processing at the Materials Engineering Institute of the National Research Centre, also in Montreal (1981).
In 1967, Michel Dallaire opened his own design firm. He quickly scored many successes with his work, and has received numerous prestigious awards here and abroad. A few examples are worth mentioning: in 1986, he won a gold medal in the Canada Awards for Excellence for his proposed bicycle brake levers; in 2000, the Institute of Design Montreal awarded him its Grand Prize and its Special Price in research; since 1998, the International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva has awarded him four gold medals and one silver medal. Also worth mentioning is the Paul-émile Borduas Prize, the highest distinction awarded by the Québec government in the field of the visual arts, which, in 1991, recognized his life’s work.
His recent projects include the design of all cabin products for Air Canada’s North American and International fleets, the design of street furniture for the Quartier international de Montreal, which has received more than 30 awards, and the design of all the public area furnishings for the Québec Library and Archives. Lastly, he designed the BIXI free bike system for the City of Montreal. It garnered the 2009 Bronze International Design Excellence Award, the 2009 Gold Edison Award, and was ranked 19th by Time Magazine in the top 50 inventions for 2008. This project has also been purchased by London, Boston, Minneapolis, Washington, Melbourne, New York, Toronto and Ottawa, for a total of more than 38,000 bicycles in circulation on 3 continents.