This is the first retrospective devoted to Gae Aulenti (1927 – 2012), one of the most representative practitioners of contemporary architecture and design. In her over 60-year career, the multitalented designer worked in various fields: from design on an urban scale to exhibition design, landscape architecture, interior decoration, furniture design, graphics and set design. The exhibition presents her career in both an analytical and striking way to convey her mode of seeing, imagining and designing reality, which left its mark on several Italian and foreign contexts in the second half of the 20th century. The itinerary is composed of a sequence of rooms reproduced on a 1:1 scale, with the aid of original materials (drawings, photographs, models) from the architect’s Milanese archive.
The occasion is intended to be a comprehensive reassessment through life-size reconstructions of parts of Gae Aulenti's works. Triennale Milano is the institution that, more than any other institution, accompanied Gae Aulenti on his long journey of expressive adventures: it was there where he began his career, in the early fifties; and it was there that on October 16, 2012, he received the Medaglia d'Oro alla Carriera (Golden Medal for Lifetime Achievement) for his contribution to Italian architecture.
Gae Aulenti at the Gare d'Orsay construction site, 1980, author unidentified.
The exhibition takes a two-pronged approach to documenting Aulenti’s work. The first consists of a series of 1:1 scale reproductions of several of her most influential interior and architectural projects. Visitors enter the exhibition by passing through a recreation of her ‘Arrival at the Seaside’ installation for the 13th Triennale exhibition in 1964, a series of sketches of robed women blown up to life-size and set against a reflective background beneath an undulating textile ceiling.
Moving deeper into the gallery, visitors are then deposited into the Olivetti showroom in Buenos Aires, which Aulenti designed in 1968. Here, a set of risers act as a display for Olivetti’s products, many of which were designed by Aulenti, including her ‘King Sun’ lamp, made for Kartell in 1967, as well as typewriters by the likes of Ettore Sottsass and Marcello Nizzoli.
