Gae Aulenti – architect

Designer who made mark in Italy and abroad

Gae Aulenti forged a career in design
when female architects were rare

The architect Gae Aulenti, who blazed a trail for women in the design world in post-War Italy and went on to enjoy a career lasting more than half a century, was born on this day in 1927 in Palazzolo dello Stella, a small town about midway between Venice and Trieste.

In a broad and varied career, among a long list of clients Aulenti designed showrooms for Fiat and Olivetti, furniture for Zanotta, department stores for La Rinascente, a railway station in Milan, stage sets for theatre and opera director Luca Ronconi and villas for wealthy private clients.

She lectured at the Venice and Milan Schools of Architecture and was on the editorial staff of the design magazine, Casabella.

Yet she is best remembered for her part in transforming redundant buildings facing possible demolition into museums and galleries, her most memorable project being the interior of the Beaux Arts-style Gare d'Orsay railway station in Paris, where she turned the cavernous central hall, a magnificent shed lit by arching rooflights, into a minimalist exhibition space for impressionist art.

Aulenti also created galleries at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Palau Nacional in Barcelona as well as turning San Francisco’s Beaux Art Main Library into a Museum of Asian Art.

The frontage of Milan's Cadorna railway station was
restored in 1999 to a design by Gae Aulenti

She restored Milan’s Cadorna railway station and the adjoining square, oversaw the expansion of Perugia Airport and designed six stores for the American fashion designer Adrienne Vittadini, including one on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles.

Aulenti was born Gaetana Aulenti in Palazzolo dello Stella, in the region of Fruili-Venezia Giulia, a town through which the Stella river passes a few kilometres north of the Laguna di Marano.  At home, she read and learned the piano and it was because her parents had no ambitions for her beyond finding an eligible husband that she was determined to forge her own path in life.  She went to Milan and enrolled at the Milan School of Architecture at the Polytechnic University.

When she graduated, one of only two women in a class of 20, she set up a private practice in Milan and joined the staff of Casabella magazine.

She became part of a Neo-Liberty movement, reacting against the growing dominance of modernism and arguing for a revival of local building traditions and individual expression.

Piazza Gae Aulenti is part of Porta Nuova Garibaldi
renovation project in central Milan

Aulenti's distinctive outlook soon attracted clients, among them Gianni Agnelli, chairman of the Fiat empire, for which she designed showrooms in Turin, Zurich and Brussels. Agnelli became a close friend and when Fiat bought the rundown Palazzo Grassi on the Grand Canal in Venice, he commissioned her to renovate the building as an exhibition space. She also built a ski lodge for Agnelli in St Moritz.

For Olivetti she created shop windows for showrooms in Paris and Buenos Aires, where with the skilful use of mirrored steps she produced a display of typewriters that wrapped around a street corner and appeared to multiply infinitely.

During the 1960s and 70s, Aulenti designed furniture for many of Milan's major design houses, including Knoll, Zanotta and Kartell, as well as lighting for Artemide, Stilnovo and Martinelli Luce. Her folding chair made from stainless steel and a coffee table made from a thick square of glass supported on four black casters have found their way into museums of modern art.

Her major breakthrough came in 1980, when she was chosen to design the new interior of the Gare d’Orsay, where she tore out the majority of the building’s interior features, in their place creating airy galleries that preserved the original Beaux-Arts features of the old railway station while offering a modern environment in which to give the collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces maximum impact.

The main hall of the Orsay Museum in Paris

In 1997, Aulenti refurbished the dilapidated Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, transforming the former stables into an exhibition space.

She left her mark on Milan, which became her adopted home city, with the restoration of the Cadorna railway station in 1999. 

Aulenti died in 2012, a few weeks short of what would have been her 85^th birthday, having been in failing health for some time.

Two months later, a modern circular piazza at the heart of the Porta Nuova Garibaldi development next to the Porta Garibaldi railway station, featuring a continuous flowing circle of seating surrounding a vast reflecting pool, 60 metres in diameter, was named Gae Aulenti Piazza in her memory.

The Scuderie del Quirinale was restored by Aulenti in 1999

Travel tip:

The Scuderie del Quirinale is a palace in Rome situated in front of the Palazzo del Quirinale, official residence of the President of the Republic. It was built between 1722 and 1732, commissioned by Pope Innocent XIII. It maintained its original function as a stable until 1938, when it was adapted to a garage. In the 1980s it was transformed into a museum of carriages. It was restored by Gae Aulenti in time for the 2000 Jubilee and inaugurated by President Azeglio Ciampi.

Aulenti was commissioned by her friend Gianni Agnelli
to restore Palazzo Grassi after it was acquired by Fiat

Travel tip:

The Palazzo Grassi – sometimes known as the Palazzo Grassi-Stucky – was designed by Giorgio Massari in the Venetian Classical style and built between 1748 and 1772. It is located on the Grand Canal, between the Palazzo Moro Lin and the Campo San Samuele.  It has a formal palace façade, constructed of white marble, but lacks the lower mercantile openings typical of many Venetian palaces.  After it was sold by the Grassi family in 1840, the ownership passed through many individuals until it was bought by the Fiat Group in 1983, at a time when there was talk of it being demolished. Restored by Gae Aulenti, it is now owned by the French entrepreneur François Pinault, who exhibits his personal art collection there.

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Mario Borghezio – controversial politician

Lega Nord MEP renowned for extremist views

Mario Borghezio is a controversial
figure in Italian politics

Mario Borghezio, one of Italy’s most controversial political figures whose extreme right-wing views have repeatedly landed him in trouble, was born on this day in 1947 in Turin.

Borghezio is a member of Lega Nord, the party led by Umberto Bossi that was set up originally to campaign for Italy to be broken up so that the wealthy north of the country would sever its political and economic ties with the poorer south.

He has been a Member of the European Parliament since 1999 and has served on several committees, including Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and the Committee on Petitions.

He was even undersecretary to the Ministry of Justice from 1994-95.

Yet he had regularly espoused extremist and racist views, to the extent that even the right-wing British party UKIP, with whom he developed strong links, moved to distance themselves from him over one racist outburst.

It was at their behest that he was expelled from the European Parliament’s Europe of Freedom and Democracy group after making racist remarks about Cecile Kyenge, Italy’s first black cabinet minister, whom he said was more suited to being a housekeeper and claimed would impose “African tribal conditions” in Italy.

Borghezio's outspoken views have landed him
in trouble during his career

The comments eventually saw Borghezio appear before a tribunal in Milan earlier this year, which fined him 1,000 euros and ordered him to pay Ms Kyenge, an eye surgeon originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo but resident in Italy for 30 years, a further €50,000 in damages.

It was not the first time Borghezio’s outspoken views had landed him in trouble.  In fact, he has a charge sheet stretching back to 1993, when he was ordered to pay a 750,000 lire fine for violence against a minor when he apprehended an 12-year-old unlicensed Moroccan street seller and forcibly restrained him while waiting for the police.

Subsquently, he was sentenced to two months and 20 days in prison in 2005 for setting fire to the pallets on which some migrants were sleeping in Turin, although this was commuted to a €3,040 fine.

In 2007 he was arrested by Belgian police for participating in protest against what he claimed was the "Islamisation of Europe", while in 2011 he was accused of promoting racial hatred when he criticised those who brought the Bosnian war criminal Ratko Mladic to justice for denying him the opportunity “to halt the advance of Islam into Europe” through his genocide of Muslim men.

Later in the same year, he was suspended, albeit only temporarily, by his party, Lega Nord, for praising some of the ideas in the manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian anti-Islam extremist who a week earlier had killed eight people in a car bomb attack in Oslo before slaying 69 members of the Norwegian Labour Party’s youth division in a gun rampage at a summer camp two hours later.

Borghezio remains a member of Lega Nord and an MEP.

Turin is famous for its arcaded streets

Travel tip:

Turin, the one-time capital of Italy, is best known for its royal palaces but tends to be overshadowed by other cities such as Rome, Florence, Milan and Venice when it comes to attracting tourists.  Yet there is much to like about a stay in Turin, from its many historic cafés to 12 miles of arcaded streets and some of the finest restaurants in Piedmont, yet because visitors do not flock to Turin in such large numbers prices tend to be a little lower than in Rome and Florence and Venice.

Turin's Piazza San Carlo

Travel tip:

To enjoy Turin’s historic cafés, head for Via Po, Turin’s famous promenade linking Piazza Vittorio Veneto with Piazza Castello, where it is impossible to walk more than a few metres without coming to a café, or a pasticceria, or nearby Piazza San Carlo, one of the city’s main squares. Inside, it is still possible to imagine the revolutionary atmosphere that swept through the haunts of writers and artists in the 19th century. Philosophers and writers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Alexandre Dumas, the composers Puccini and Rossini, the politician Cavour and the poet Cesare Pavese all discussed the affairs of the day in these famous coffee houses.

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Roberto Capucci - fashion designer

'Sculptor in cloth' who rejected ready-to-wear

Roberto Capucci is still involved with the
fashion and design world even in his 80s

The fashion designer Roberto Capucci, whose clothes were famous for their strikingly voluminous, geometric shapes and use of unusual materials, was born on this day in 1930 in Rome.

Precociously talented, Capucci opened his first studio in Rome at the age of 19 and by his mid-20s was regarded as the best designer in Italy, particularly admired by Christian Dior, the rising star of French haute-couture.

It was during this period, towards the end of the 1950s, that Capucci revolutionised fashion by inventing the Linea a Scatola – the box-line or box look – in which he created angular shapes for dresses and introduced the concept of volume and architectural elements of design into clothing, so that his dresses, which often featured enormous quantities of material, were almost like sculpted pieces of modern art, to be not so much worn as occupied by the wearer.

Growing up in Rome, Capucci was artistically inclined from an early age. He attended the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma and wanted to become either an architect or a film director, designing clothes initially as no more than a diversion.

Yet he quickly revealed a talent for creating innovative, non-conformist dresses and fashion became his main occupation. He opened his first atelier in the Via Sistina in Rome in 1950 and the following year was invited to exhibit at one of the earliest fashion shows in Italy, organised by the aristocratic entrepreneur Giovanni Battista Giorgini.

Some of the Capucci designs on display at the Roberto
Capucci Foundation Museum in Florence

His coats lined with ermine and leopard and capes trimmed with fox fur would not have found favour with many of today’s buyers yet at the time were a hit.  The press noted Capucci’s youth and dubbed him ‘the boy wonder’. Giorgini was well aware of the appetite for spending among post-War jet setters and promoted his young protégé for all his worth.

It was not long before Capucci was being hailed as Italy’s best designer and was becoming known in Paris, the world’s fashion capital.  But it was the American market that Giorgini was keen to exploit, having made good contacts while the Allies were liberating Italy.

After he had unveiled his Linea a Scatola collection in 1958 Capucci was awarded the Boston Fashion Award, considered to be the clothing trade’s equivalent of an Oscar, which established his reputation beyond Italy.

He opened an atelier in Paris in 1962 and remained in the French capital for six years, living in some style in a suite at the Ritz Hotel and keeping the company of Coco Chanel among others.  He launched a perfume range, the first Italian to do so in France, but in 1968 he decided to go back to Italy, establishing a new Rome studio in Via Gregoriana.

The logo of today's Capucci fashion house

Where Capucci differed from other designers is that he was not interested in producing clothes for the mass market.  He considered himself an artist and an architect and regarded his creations less as garments so such as sculptures in cloth.  He used yards and yards of material in order to create volume and shape; one critic observed that his clothes were ‘like soft body armour’.

So when ready-to-wear clothing and consumer fashion took hold in Italy in the 1980s, Capucci withdrew.  He would not allow his agenda to be set by the demands of the market and resigned from the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, the body that promoted Italian design, membership of which would have required him to participate in four fashion shows each year.  He would exhibit, but only at times that suited him and in carefully chosen settings, often museums.

He also opposed the cult of the supermodel, which in his opinion was a distraction from the garment.  He preferred to create dresses for individuals – opera singers, actresses, the wives of politicians and debutantes from Roman society. He made outfits for Marilyn Monroe, Gloria Swanson, Jacqueline Kennedy and Silvana Mangano, the Italian actress, who was raised in poverty in Rome during the Second World War but who blossomed, in his opinion, to be ‘the most elegant woman in the world’.

Capucci today is a brand, with a ready-to-wear range established in 2003. The clothes are not designed by Capucci himself but by young designers such as the German Bernhard Willhelm and the American Tara Subkoff, who have access to a huge archive of the maestro’s work, which runs to 30,000 individual designs.

Today, aged 87, he remains involved through the Fondazione Roberto Capucci, set up in 2005, which preserves an archive of 439 historical dresses, 500 signed illustrations, 22,000 original drawings and a large photo and media library.

In 2007, at Villa Bardini in Florence, he opened the Roberto Capucci Foundation Museum, which hosts organised exhibitions and teaching activities.

The Via Sistina in Rome looking towards
Piazza Trinità dei Monti

Travel tip:

Via Sistina, where Capucci opened his first studio in Rome, is the wealthy Campo Marzio district of the city centre, linking Piazza Barberini with the church of Trinità dei Monti, at the top of the Spanish Steps.  It was orginally part of the Strada Felice, commissioned by Pope Sixtus V to link the Pincian Hill with the Basilica of Santa Croce in Jerusalem, about two kilometres to the east of the centre.  The street today is lined with elegant palaces. The Via Gregoriana, where Capucci established his second studio in the city, runs almost parallel with Via Sistina

Elegant Via della Spiga in Milan's
'fashion quadrilateral'

Travel Tip

Anyone wishing to admire the designs of today’s Capucci fashion house should head for Via della Spiga in Milan, where the company has its main prestige showroom. The elegant, pedestrianised street forms the northeast boundary of the luxurious Quadrilatero della Moda – the fashion quadrilateral – bordered by Via Monte Napoleone, Via Manzoni, Via Sant'Andrea and Corso Venezia.

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Lorenzo Ghiberti – sculptor

Goldsmith renowned for 'Gates of Paradise'

The baptistry doors known as
'The Gates of Paradise' 

Sculptor, goldsmith and architect Lorenzo Ghiberti died on this day in 1455 in Florence.

Part of his legacy were the magnificent doors he created for the Baptistery of the Florence Duomo that have become known as the Gates of Paradise.

Ghiberti had become a man of learning, living up to the image of the early 15th century artist as a student of antiquity, who was investigative, ambitious and highly creative.

His Commentaries - I Commentarii - which he started to write in 1447, include judgements on the great contemporary and 14th century masters as well as his scientific theories on optics and anatomy, revealing the scope of his artistic and practical experimentation.

Ghiberti was born in 1378 in Pelago near Florence and was trained as a goldsmith by Bartolo di Michele, whom his mother had married in 1406 but had lived with for some time previously.  Ghiberti took his name from his mother’s first husband, Cione Ghiberti, although he later claimed that Di Michele was his real father.

He moved to Pesaro in 1400 to fulfil a painting commission from the city's ruler, Sigismondo Malatesta, but returned to Florence when he heard about a competition that had been set up to find someone to make a pair of bronze doors for the Baptistery of the cathedral.  

Detail from Ghiberti's second set of doors to the baptistery,
which depicts scenes from the life of Joseph

Ghiberti’s design won and the contract was signed for him to produce the doors in Di Michele’s workshop.  He began the project in 1407 and it would take him until 1424 to complete. He actually created two sets of doors; the first, for the Baptistery, depicted scenes from the New Testament, the second, with ten square panels and deemed to be superior to the first, scenes from the Old Testament.

It was Michelangelo who suggested they were of such quality they would be worthy of being chosen as the Gates of Paradise.  The painter and art historian Giorgio Vasari declared then to be “undeniably perfect in every way”.

Although, it was the doors that established Ghiberti’s reputation he took other commissions, including gilded bronze statues of St John the Baptist for niches of the Orsanmichele church in Florence and the Arte di Calimala (Wool Merchants' Guild) and one of St. Matthew for the Arte di Cambio (Bankers' Guild). He  also produced a bronze figure of St. Stephen for the Arte della Lana (Wool Manufacturers' Guild).

He also wrote what is considered to be the first autobiography of an artist, which formed part of I Commentarii. 

I Commentarii has come to be regarded as one of the most important sources of information about the Renaissance and the art of the period.

Ghiberti was an influential figure in many ways.  Among the artists who worked in his studios as they were making their way in the world included Donatello, Masolino di Panichale, Michelozzo di Bartolomeo Michelozzi, Paolo Uccello, and Antonio Pollaiuolo.

He married Marsilia, the 16-year-old daughter of Bartolomeo di Luca, a wool carder. They had two sons – Tommaso, who was born in 1417, and Vittorio born the following year – who both joined Ghiberti in his business, Vittorio taking over the workshop after his father’s death.

The market square in Pelago

Travel tip:

Pelago, a small town in Tuscany about 20km (12 miles) east of Florence, was developed by the Etruscans on the site of a settlement thought to date back to the Paleolithic period. It grew around a castle built in the 11th century in an area rich in castles, usually built on the top of a hill.  At the foot of Pelago Castle is a marketplace and a number of palaces once owned by wealthy noblemen.  The church of San Clemente, which originates in the 12th century and now contains a museum, can be found within the castle walls.

Florence's Duomo is one of the most familiar sights in Italy

Travel tip:

The Florence Duomo - the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore - with its enormous dome by Filippo Brunelleschi and campanile by Giotto, is one of Italy's most recognisable and most photographed sights, towering above the city and the dominant feature of almost every cityscape. From groundbreaking to consecration, the project took 140 years to complete and involved a series of architects. Arnolfo di Cambio, who also designed the church of Santa Croce and the Palazzo Vecchio was the original architect engaged and it was to his template, essentially, that the others worked.  When he died in 1410, 14 years after the first stone was laid, he was succeeded by Giotto, who himself died in 1337, after which his assistant Andrea Pisano took up the project.  Pisano died in 1348, as the Black Death swept Europe, and a succession of architects followed, culminating in Brunelleschi, who won a competition - against Ghiberti, as it happens - to build the dome, which remains the largest brick-built dome ever constructed.

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