A design drawing of an inflatable structure in the form of a tortoise with an articulated head, as part of a series of figurative shelters by Jean Aubert in 1972. The French architect was highly revered for innovative interior designs and here animates ideas inspired by Buckminster Fullers’ infamous geodesic dome. Aubert’s hand-drawn proposal is relatively simple and slightly absurd in its combination of oversized anatomy and technical specification. Although it was never realised in the form of a specific building, only a paper model remains, Aubert’s final project was the proposal of a vast mobile theatre, which largely resembled a giant tortoise.

A note on the drawing states that the concept is one of AJS Aérolande, a radical group founded in Paris in 1966 consisting of three architecture students from Ecole des Beaux-Arts. For a time Aérolande became the pneumatic architecture wing of the left-wing revolutionary theoretical group Utopie.