Gae Aulenti Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Gae Aulenti (1927-2012) was an Italian architect, interior and lighting designer and stage designer. She is best known for converting the Gare d’Orsay railway station in Paris into the Musée d’Orsay, and for museum projects in Paris, Venice, Barcelona and San Francisco, as well as lamps and furniture such as the Pipistrello lamp.

Friuli, Milan and Casabella

Aulenti was born in Palazzolo dello Stella, Friuli, in 1927 and graduated from the Politecnico di Milano in 1953. She joined the editorial staff of Casabella-continuità under Ernesto Nathan Rogers and taught in Venice and Milan.

Design and exhibitions

In the 1960s and 1970s she designed showrooms for Olivetti and Fiat, the Pipistrello lamp for Martinelli Luce (1965) and furniture for Knoll and Zanotta, and worked as a stage designer with Luca Ronconi.

Museums

In 1980 she won the competition for the interior of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, opened in 1986. She then designed the galleries of the Musée National d’Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou, the restoration of Palazzo Grassi in Venice, the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco (2003). She received the Praemium Imperiale in 1991 and died in Milan in 2012, shortly after a square there was named after her.