Another architectural legend leaves us: now Gae Aulenti

The Italian architect and designer Gae Aulenti died last night after a long illness. An outstanding woman, I remember that was the first woman architect I met in my early years as a student. A woman with character, remember the publication of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris with the floral theme in the lunettes of the vault or the lamp "Die Fledermaus" by Martinelli Luce. In my mind her work was linked to the design but it was one of those first names that I have never forgotten.

"April" folding chair, designed in 1964. / Glass sofa table by Gae Aulenti for Fontana Arte 1980.

Gae Aulenti. By Cesare Battelli.

Gae Aulenti (born Gaetana Aulenti; December 4, 1927 - November 1, 2012) was an Italian architect, lighting and interior designer, and industrial designer. She is well known for several large-scale museum projects, including Musée d'Orsay in Paris (1980–86), the Contemporary Art Gallery at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Palazzo Grassi in Venice (1985–86), and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (2000–2003). Gae was one of the few women designing in the postwar period in Italy, and created many elegant pieces.

A native of Palazzolo dello Stella (Friuli), she studied in Milan. She worked for the design magazine Casabella from 1955 until 1965 as an art director, and become part of a group of young professionals influenced by the philosophy of Ernesto Nathan Rogers. Aulenti has also occasionally worked as a stage designer for Luca Ronconi.

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Gae Aulenti and her "Pipistrello lamp", designed in 1963. Via Decoblog.

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Gae Aulenti

Gaetana Aulenti (1927-2012) was an Italian architect who dedicated herself to recovering the architectural values of the past. For almost ten years she worked in the editorial office of Casabella under the direction of Ernesto Nathan Rogers. His works include numerous renovations and rehabilitations of buildings of historical value.

In 1953 she finished her degree in architecture at the Politecnico di Milano. In the fifties Italian architecture was devoted to research into the historical and cultural recovery of the architectural values of the past and the existing built environment. From her pages in the magazine Casabella she proposed the Neoliberty as an alternative to the rationalism prevailing in the architectural conventions of the moment.

After obtaining her doctorate, she taught at the School of Architecture in Venice from 1960 to 1962 and at the School of Architecture in Milan from 1964 to 1967.

As many of her contemporaries, Aulenti designed several furniture series throughout the 1960s for the La Rinascente store and later designed furniture for Zanotta, where she created two of her best-known pieces, Abril, a stainless steel folding chair with a removable lid, and the Sanmarco table built from glass plates.

In 1981 she was chosen to renovate the 1900 Beaux Arts Gare d'Orsay train station, a spectacular landmark originally designed by Victor Laloux, in the Musée d'Orsay. Her work at the Musée d'Orsay led to the creation of a space for the National Museum of Modern Art at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the restoration of Palazzo Grassi as an art museum in Venice (1985); the conversion of a former Italian embassy in Berlin into an Academy of Sciences and the restoration of a 1929 exhibition hall in Barcelona as the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (1985). In San Francisco, she converted the city's Central Library into an Asian art museum. In 2008 she carried out the restoration of the Palazzo Branciforte in Palermo.

In 2012, Gae Aulenti received the Gold Medal of the Triennale di Milano for her artistic career in recognition of her position as one of the masters of Italian design.