“No.I can’t stand the rubble “. A phrase that will become the refrain of a life and a career. Gae Aulenti always repeated it. It is no coincidence: he will find himself working in an Italy to be rebuilt on that rubble. And that is perhaps why he signs up at the Politecnico di Milano and in 1953 she was among the very few women to graduate. Born Gaetana Aulenti, in 1927, near Udine in a half Neapolitan and half Apulian family of professionals, intellectuals and small owners, she faces the Second World War as a partisan and will never forget the past, nor will it fail the civic, cultural and intellectual commitment that will distinguish it.
1981. Gae Aulenti at the Musée d’Orsay.
“Architecture is a useful profession”
“Architecture is a useful profession” is another of his famous thoughts. At the beginning of her career she immediately realizes that she is forced to move in a space for men only (among colleagues such as Vittorio Gregotti and Aldo Rossi), but she does not let herself be intimidated. When she begins to collaborate as editor and graphic designer of Casabella magazine, alongside her “god”, the academic Ernesto Nathan Rogers, they mistake her for her secretary.
“The battle of the drafting roosters” will define that experience later. Ironically: within a decade it comes to create the famous “Pipistrello” neoliberty lamp, one of the most iconic in the history of Italian design made for Olivetti. Years later he will add: “Architecture is a man’s job, but I’ve always pretended nothing happened.” So much so that when he arrived at the construction site they would ask themselves: “Where is the architect?”, “It’s me,” he replied.
Gae Aulenti signs works all over the world
A dense and important career that of Gae Aulenti, an internationally renowned architect, who led her, from Milan, to create famous works such as the Orsay Museum in Paris, the 12-storey Tokyo Institute of Italian Culture, the rearrangement of piazzale Cadorna with the adjoining sculpture Ago, Fi1984. Gae Aulenti in the Parisian construction site of the Orsay Museum. lo and Nodo by the spouses Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. And again Palazzo Grassi, the subway in Naples, the Perugia airport.
And which is back today, ten years after his death – on October 31, 2012, at the age of 85 – with the book, Gae Aulenti. Reflections and thoughts on the brilliant architect of journalist and writer Annarita Briganti (Cairo) which will be presented during Bookcity 2022 in Milan in November (it was also remembered with a study day at the Milan Triennale on Germano Celant and at the Politecnico with the exhibition Gae Aulenti, Città opera open in mid-June).
The masterpiece: the Musée d’Orsay in Paris
The Italian Cultural Institute in Tokyo His absolute masterpiece is the refurbishment of the interior of the Gare d’Orsay, the former Paris railway station where the famous museum opened in 1986 was set up. 9, the then President of the French Republic visits her, Mitterand, says Briganti. He reflects, talks to her, asks and then recommends everyone to follow the architect’s instructions.
He will grant her the Legion of Honor, one of the many awards received by Aulenti, ranging from the special prize for the Culture of the Italian Republic to the title of Cavaliere di Gran Cross to the Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement, personally collected at the Milan Triennale in 2012, shortly before his death.
“If everyone likes you, it means that something is wrong”
But it is when he renovates the Institute of Italian culture in Tokyo, with the edges in white marble and the walls in bright red in homage to the long Japanese artisan tradition of lacquers, that the controversies are unleashed. A scandal breaks out. It is claimed that that red gave a pink patina to the cherry trees on the street.
«One day he receives an envelope full of money from the Japanese publisher of the building opposite the Institute, from the alleged victim. He returned it without even opening it. One of his favorite statements about him was: “If everyone likes you, it means that something is wrong” “ underlines Briganti.
1977. The Italian designer and architect Gae Aulenti portrayed inside her home – studio in Milan.
And… for piazzale Cadorna
Gae Aulenti is not upset even by the criticisms of Piazzale Cadorna, one of the symbolic places of Milan.
«Piazzale Cadorna had become a kind of open space where the paths of cars intertwined. They had destroyed the continuity with Foro Buonaparte. It had to be rebuilt. I am continually criticized and then instead there are taxi drivers who adore it “he will confess. Adding: “Buildings are not intelligent, they are intelligently designed.” The great love that “never went away” Gae Aulenti will always escape any label.
She loves designing sets in the long creative partnership that binds her to director Luca Ronconi. “After all, in architecture a door is just a door, on the scene it is much more, it is a limit or a boundary” she argued. She is exalted for the multiplicity of her souls of hers: designer, set designer, graphic designer, interior designer. Always an architect. And partisan. “You are a partisan even when you build a villa in Marrakech,” they say of her.
“See you in Gae Aulenti” …
Determined in work as timid in life. “Was Gae some kind of lady let’s say very masculine? But if you talked to us, if you knew her she was very feminine »says in the book the journalist Lina Sotis who she also defined her as” the ducess of non-conformism “(” she always arrived twenty years before her “). He has a daughter, Giovanna Buzzi, now a famous Italian costume designer (she also won the Metropolitan Fashion Awards, among others).
He has a twenty-year relationship with environmentalist and European parliamentarian Carlo Ripa di Meana, who passed away in 2018. An intense love that in 1962 led her to create the well-known rocking chair “Sgarsul” in her honor. When they split up she doesn’t mention him anymore, she doesn’t even speak to him anymore. “He wasn’t leaving anymore,” Gae, already ill, tells her friends when she tells of the eventful goodbye with her partner.
A month after his death, the municipality of Milan will give its name to the futuristic circular square raised 6 meters from the road and with a diameter of 100 meters, located between the districts of Garibaldi and Isola and designed by the Argentine César Pelli. Who knows if the guys who see themselves today “in Gae Aulenti” know its history.
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