Gae Aulenti

«The architect» she said in an interview "must be able to read the context because very often the roots are hidden underground. Knowing how to recognize and make them appear is the important work of historically reinterpreting a place».

Born in Friuli in 1927, Gae Aulenti was a great Italian designer and architect who in time specialised mostly in the field of museum exhibition design.

She carried out her studies in Milan. In fact, she graduated in 1953 from the Faculty of Architecture at the Polytechnic University. Those years for Milan were ones of great cultural excitement in which Italian architecture sought to recover some of its architectural values from the past, channelling all these new ideas into the Neoliberty movement which Gae Aulenti joined, in stark contrast to the rationalist movement that had established itself up to that time. The movement aimed at recuperating the artisanal dimension and the compositional pursuit of detail.

An undeniably multifaceted figure in a constant flurry of activity, Gae Aulenti collaborated alongside great architects in a number of very prestigious architecture faculties all the while participating on the editorial boards of several trade magazines such as Casabella and Lotus International.

Of her most important architectural works we cannot omit: the setting up of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the Olivetti showroom also in Paris, and the Italian Institute of Culture in Tokyo, to name a few.

A constant urge to experiment and attention to detail allowed her to approach product design over the years, creating products and furnishings that immediately became part of what we now acknowledge as design icons, often exhibited in the world’s most renowned museums. Some of the most important companies she collaborated with include Zanotta, Martinelli Luce, Exteta, and Kartell.