Login
Registered users
Italo Rota has passed away at 70. The architect, designer, and theater designer died on Saturday, April 6, in Milan. His passing was announced by Stefano Boeri, president of Triennale Milano, a museum with which Rota had an ongoing collaboration from the age of 30. Boeri announced, “Rota will, of course, lie in repose at the Triennale, his home.”
The brilliant and multifaceted Rota was one of the greats of Italian architecture. He will lie in repose 10:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 9, in the Cuore space of Milan’s Triennale museum – an area devoted to archival research that opened in February. The funeral will take place on Wednesday, April 10.
Italo Rota was born in 1953 in Milan and graduated from Politecnico di Milano in 1982. He began his career at Franco Albini’s studio, later moving to Vittorio Gregotti’s. In the late ’80s, he moved to Paris to lead the renovation of the Musée d’Orsay, for which he won the competition with Gae Aulenti. The two also collaborated on the renovation of the Musée National d’Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou. His next projects were the design of new classrooms for the Ecole du Louvre in Cour Carré, lighting design for Notre Dame Cathedral, and the urban redevelopment of central Nantes.
Returning to Italy in the mid-’90s, he opened his studio in Milan, whose projects range from product design for important Italian companies to exhibit design, museum design, and masterplans. Projects from this period include the Foro Italico promenade in Palermo (Gold Medal for Italian Public Space Architecture 2006); the Museo del Novecento in Palazzo dell’Arengario, Piazza Duomo, Milan (2010); Perugia’s Sandro Penna municipal library (2004); and Club Cavalli in Florence and Boscolo Exedra Hotel in Milan (both 2009).
He was also involved in EXPO Milano 2015, designing the Kuwait Pavilion, the Italian Wine Pavilion, and the Arts and Foods Pavilion. Working with Carlo Ratti’s studio, he designed the Italian Pavilion at EXPO 2020 Dubai. His most recent projects include the Reggio Emilia Musei Civici, the Elatech robot factory in Brembilla, the large children’s theater in Maciachini Milan, and the Noosphere Laboratory pavilion at the Triennale.
As well as his projects in France and Italy, Rota had an impressive international portfolio, including Casa Italiana at Columbia University, New York (1997), the Hindu temple in Mumbai (2009), and the Chameleon Club at the Byblos Hotel in Dubai (2011).
He was head of the design school at NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belli Arti in Milan, and held professorships at Ecole d’Architecture UP8 Paris-Belleville (1987–90), IED in Milan (1996–98), and Facoltà di Architettura di Ferrara (1998 –2000). During his career, he collaborated with many other universities in Italy and abroad.
Cover image by Massimo Sestini, courtesy of Italo Rota and Partners
All images in the gallery retrieved from Wikimedia Commons
