There are those who see invisible but well-delineated divisions between different disciplines and those who try to spark new dialogues between them.
Italian architect, lighting and interior designer, Gae Aulenti, who passed away at the age of 84 on the night between Tuesday and Wednesday at her house in Milan, was definitely among the latter.
Born in 1927 in Palazzolo della Stella, near Udine, Gaetana Aulenti, better known as Gae Aulenti, studied at Milan's Polytechnic Faculty of Architecture, graduating in the '50s.
From 1955 to 1965 she worked for magazine Casabella-Continuità (vintage issues of the magazine are currently part of an installation by academic and architect Steve Parnell at the 13th Venice International Architecture Biennale) while working in the '60s as assistant at the Istituto Universitario Autonomo in Venice and at Milan Polytechnic.
Aulenti supported the Neo-Liberty trend that started as a critique of anti-historical Rationalism and as a reaction to the creative ignorance in which design floundered in those years.
Searching for roots, Neo-Liberty suggested a cultured and knowledgeable proposition for a society which, in Italy, was emerging from an economic boom and facing up to the first social reforms.
Among Aulenti's Neo-Liberty design pieces there are the “Sgarsul” rocking chair (Poltronova, 1962) and the “Pipistrello” (Bat) lampshade (Martinelli Luce, 1965), the latter incorporating a bat wing-shaped shade and a telescopic shaft that allowed to use it as a table or a floor lamp.
During this time, she also created furniture pieces for Zanotta and for Milan department store La Rinascente.
Aulenti’s designs always had a sculpturally iconic presence: they were indeed a mix of geometric forms and subtle sinuous lines and were at times characterised by semicircular motifs (think about the "King Sun" light for Kartell, 1967) or by futuristic forms (for example the "Patroclo" table light made using mouth-blown glass trapped in a wire frame, Artemide, 1975).
A woman with a passion for different disciplines, from literature to music, from art to philosophy, poetry and geography, Aulenti’s greatest projects incude the conversion of the disused Gare D’Orsay railway station in Paris into a museum, the Musée D’Orsay, (1980–86), that echoes in its vaults her studies and theories about the Neo-Liberty style.
In the decade between the '60s and the '70s Aulenti designed lighting for Kartell, FontanaArte and Artemide, as well as showrooms for Fiat and Olivetti.
Aulenti also worked as stage designer for Italian theatre director Luca Ronconi in the mid-'70s while teaching theatre set design in Prato.
In 1972 she was featured in the Italian design exhibition “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York together with radical groups such as Archizoom and Superstudio and talented architects and designers including Ugo La Pietra, Ettore Sottsass and Joe Colombo.
Her contribution was an architectural installation, a room with pyramidal shapes at each corner, that recreated buildings in a skyline and that was aimed at reminding the visitor of the interaction between objects of design and architectural spaces.
The recipient of numerous awards (in 1964 she won first prize at the Milan Triennale for her work in the Italian Pavilion inspired by the paintings of Picasso, while for the Musée d'Orsay she received the Légion d’honneur from the French government) she worked on many large scale projects throughout the decades in Italy, Japan, Spain and the USA, from Palazzo Grassi in Venice and the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, to the Italian Institute of Culture in Tokyo, from the Museu Nacional d'Art de catalunya in Barcelona to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
She recently collaborated to the restoration of the Branciforte Palace in Palermo and the San Francesco d'Assisi Airport in Perugia (opening this November) and on 16th October she received an award for her career at Milan's Triennale.
Aulenti also has a connection with fashion: in the '70s Enzo Clocchiatti commissioned Aulenti to redesign his boutique, called Cadette and based in Via Manzoni, Milan.
At the time Aulenti had already designed an Olivetti shop in rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré in Paris and was working on another Olivetti store in Buenos Aires.
Aulenti went for the optical look in Cadette's case and designed a ceiling completely covered in brown and white tiles that became a trademark feature of the Milanese boutique (I sometimes featured Aulenti's shop designs in my lectures, so people who came to hear me may be familiar with some of these images).
In 2003 she co-curated the exhibition “1950/2000 Theater of Italian Creativity” in New York that included objects but also everyday garments in which modern technologies had been integrated, renewing in this way her connection with fashion.
According to Aulenti architecture went through four different phases (that could actually be applied to other disciplines as well...) - analytic, synthetic, aesthetic and prophetic - and consisted in the study of a place or an environment.
Her work was always based on respecting the specific environments that she was studying, rediscovering the origins of a place, and recovering its architectural values and their context. In her opinion architecture had to leave a mark and a message: she definitely had (and will have) an impact on many architects and designers, but this woman considered a pioneer in her field also left us with a strong message - architecture isn't just for men.
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That is what everyone should consider legendary! Kudos to you madam architect, your life has served a lot of people and made a lot of sense! I hope i can find my passion and do something i love as well so i can excel like you.
Posted by: Play Bingo | November 02, 2012 at 12:16 PM