Abitare magazine, A537. With this issue comes to an end

20/01/2014. Abitare magazine
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA

Italian architecture magazine Abitare in its fifth cycle – after those of Piera Peroni, Franca Santi, Italo Lupi and Stefano Boeri. Architect Mario Piazza is the magazine's current editor in chief – is to end the publication of its monthly print edition. Abitare was launched in 1961 in Milan and is written in both Italian and English. Covering architecture, design, art and graphics, it became one of the world's best known design and architecture magazines.

Cover. Abitare 537. Atelier Orizzontale, Riccardo Blumer’s course at Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio-USI (photo by Luca Santiago Mora).

Cover. Abitare 537. Atelier Orizzontale, Riccardo Blumer’s course at Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio-USI (photo by Luca Santiago Mora).

On Twitter, over the weekend, the design community expressed their disappointment about the news: Italian media group RCS finishes all edition in March (RCS is also closing its economics journal Il Mundo as part of its new publishing strategy for 2014), though Abitare will continue to publish content online according to Italian news site La Stampa.

"Incredibly sad to hear that @abitare will close. Not good times here in Italy," tweeted writer and curator Joseph Grima, who was a special correspondent for the magazine and edited rival publication Domus between 2011 to 2013.

"Sad to hear that historic magazine @abitare will close. They ran the 1st big piece on my work," said designer Sebastian Bergne.

"Sorry to hear Abitare is closing, but amazed that it has taken so long for a big design/arch mag to go. Credit due for hanging in there," said V&A senior curator Kieran Long.

and the writer and critic Justin McGuirk pointed.- "Circa 2007-9 Abitare was really setting the standard. It was the one to beat."