In Memoriam: Italian architect Gae Aulenti, 84
Gae Aulenti designed this rocking chair of enameled wood and leather upholstery. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Rago Arts and Auction Center.
ROME – World-renowned Italian architect Gae Aulenti, whose creations include the transformed Musee d’Orsay in Paris, has died at her home in Milan at the age of 84, her family said Thursday.
Aulenti, who had been ill for some time, had made her last public appearance only two weeks ago to receive an award in recognition of her life’s work.
“My mother had been ill for a long time but she resisted as best she could,” her daughter Giovanna told La Repubblica newspaper, announcing Aulenti’s death on Wednesday.
Among her large-scale museum projects, Aulenti transformed the former Parisian railway station into the Musee d’Orsay in the 1980s and refurbished he contemporary art gallery at the Pompidou Centre in the French capital.
“We have lost a great woman of architecture and design, but also a great woman to the Centre Pompidou,” said the center’s director, Alfred Pacquement.
Born in Dec. 1927, Aulenti was one of the few women designers in the postwar period in Italy. She also worked as a stylist and interior designer and taught in several foreign countries.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano hailed her as one of the top in the history of contemporary architecture, “greatly appreciated in the whole world for her creative talent and in particular for her extraordinary capacity to capture the cultural values of an historic heritage.”
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Gae Aulenti designed this rocking chair of enameled wood and leather upholstery. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Rago Arts and Auction Center.
