Remembering Italo Rota: A Stalwart of Italian Architecture

Italo Rota has passed away in Milan, where he was born in 1953, the architect of the Museo del Novecento. The president of Triennale Milano, Stefano Boeri, announced to Ansa, explaining that "we will certainly hold the wake at the Triennale, which is his home." "We lose a friend and a very important person from the last years of Italian culture. A sophisticated man with unexpected and original thought. For Triennale, it's a huge loss," Boeri said. "He started working in his thirties at Triennale and never stopped. The setups, insights, books, and catalogs on architecture are countless. His last contribution," he concludes, "was the exhibition on Italian Painting, for which he curated an installation." Who was Italo Rota Among the most interesting and multifaceted figures of the Italian architectural scene, Italo Rota graduated in 1982 from the Politecnico di Milano, initially training at Franco Albini's studio and then at Vittorio Gregotti's. In the late eighties, he moved to Paris, where he signed the renovation of the Museum of Modern Art at the Centre Pompidou with Gae Aulenti, the new rooms of the French school at the Cour Carré of the Louvre, the lighting of Notre Dame Cathedral and along the Seine, and the renovation of the center of Nantes. He returned to Italy in the mid-nineties, and the activity of his new Milanese studio began to range from master planning to product design, in projects characterized by the choice of innovative materials, cutting-edge technologies, and in-depth research on light. His production highlights include the promenade of the Foro Italico in Palermo (Gold Medal for Italian Architecture for Public Spaces 2006) and the Museo del Novecento in the Palazzo dell'Arengario in Piazza Duomo in Milan (2010). In addition to France, there are numerous works carried out internationally, such as the Italian House at Columbia University, New York (1997); the Hindu Temple in Mumbai (2009); the Chameleon Club at the Byblos Hotel, Dubai (2011).