milan triennale traces the late gae aulenti's journey between architecture and the arts

Gae Aulenti (1927-2012) at triennale milano

From May 22nd, 2024 to January 12th, 2025, Triennale Milano presents a major retrospective: Gae Aulenti (1927-2012). The exhibition, designed by the Tspoon studio, pays homage to one of the most representative figures of Italian and international architecture and design in the late 20th century and early 2000s, in the first large monographic retrospective dedicated to her entire career that lasted over sixty years. It was also at the Triennale that her career began in the early 1950s, and it was there that she came on October 16th, 2012, to receive the Medaglia d’Oro alla carriera (Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement) for her contribution to Italian architecture.

installation view: Gae Aulenti at Triennale Milano | image © Alessandro Saletta – DSL Studio

looking back at the late architect’s career

Born in Palazzolo dello Stella, Gae Aulenti (1927-2012) studied in Florence, Turin, and Milan, where she graduated from the Politecnico in 1953. Early in her career, she worked at the design magazine Casabella under Ernesto Nathan Rogers, which shaped her architectural philosophy. She was renowned for integrating different aspects of architecture into her designs. Her notable works include industrial design pieces like the Pipistrello and King Sun lamps and major architectural projects such as the conversion of the Gare d’Orsay into the Musée d’Orsay and the redesign of the Centre Pompidou’s Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris. She also renovated Palazzo Grassi in Venice for Fiat and designed numerous exhibition spaces, often collaborating with Germano Celant.

image © Alessandro Saletta – DSL Studio

In the 1970s, Aulenti ventured into theater design, collaborating with Luca Ronconi on several significant productions. Her architectural projects reflected her view of architecture as an ‘art of the city,’ including the redevelopment of urban spaces and the design of public buildings in Italy and abroad. Her later projects included the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the Italian Cultural Institute in Tokyo, and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona. 

image © Alessandro Saletta – DSL Studio

a multimedia show spanning architecture, arts, and politics

The exhibition at Triennale Milano ultimately traces, in a concise yet striking manner, Gae Aulenti’s human and professional story, with a glance also at the interplay of architecture with the other arts and the interplay between culture and politics. It does not simply involve a selection, whether broad or narrow, of drawings and designs, prototypes and sketches, maquettes and photographs to be displayed on the walls or in show cases, although these are there too; rather, the occasion is intended to be a comprehensive reappraisal through life-size reconstructions of parts of Gae Aulenti’s works.

image © Alessandro Saletta – DSL Studio

The selection focuses on a sample collection of different types of design (exhibition and museum displays, private houses, showrooms, metropolitan stations, theater scenery …), intended to present a sequence of environments that the visitor can explore and that dovetail one into the other without interruption, to bring us the sense of a life consisting of constancy and faithfulness but also of detours and abandonments. So the journey begins in the euphoric 1960s, with a reconstruction of Arrivo al Mare (Arrival at the Sea), featuring swarming groups of silhouetted Picasso women reflected in mirrors, which was actually shown – and won an award – at the 1964 Triennale. It ends with a part of the small San Francesco airport at Perugia (2007-2011), with structural elements painted in Gae Aulenti’s favorite red, where we say our last goodbye.

Progetto Sgarsul per Poltronova, 1962 | image © Archivio Gae Aulenti

The exhibition is accompanied by several publications, available in Italian and English, published by Electa: a guide illustrating the spaces and designs that can be seen in the exhibition, a pack of cards conceived as an illustrated map of Gae Aulenti’s relationships, and finally a catalog, scheduled to come out in the autumn, fully illustrated and based on firsthand documents: the catalog will be a biographical reconstruction that aspires to transfer, from news reports to history, and from life to history, the worlds and times that this architect lived through and interpreted. Milan Triennale staged the show in collaboration with the Archivio Gae Aulenti and curated by Giovanni Agosti with Nina Artioli, director of the Archivio Gae Aulenti, and Nina Bassoli, curator for Architecture, Urban Regeneration and Cities at Triennale.

Parigi, Musée d’Orsay, 1986 | image © Mario Carrieri

Milano, Piazza Cadorna, 2000 | image © Guia Sambone

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image © Alessandro Saletta - DSL Studio

XIII Triennale – Arrivo al Mare, Foto di Ancillotti, 1964| image © Triennale Milano

Perugia, Aeroporto, 2012 | image © Federico Ventriglia

XIII Triennale – Arrivo al Mare, Publifoto, 1964 | image © Triennale Milano

project info:

name: Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)

location: Triennale Milano | @triennalemilano
in collaboration with: Archivio Gae Aulenti

curators: Giovanni Agosti, Nina Artioli, and Nina Bassoli 
exhibition design: TSPOON | @tspoon_arch
viewing dates: May 22nd, 2024 – January 12th, 2025