Architect and Innovator Italo Rota Dies

Sofia Celeste
·2 min read
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MILAN — Italo Rota, the Milan-born Italian architect, designer and innovator, as he was widely known, died on Saturday.

“Today we lose an absolute protagonist of Italian architecture and culture. We will miss his powerful and barely whispered ideas, his counter-current visions, his very rich and always intelligent compositions,” Triennale Milano president Stefano Boeri announced on his Instagram account. The cause of death was not released. To his credit, Rota, who graduated from Milan’s Politecnico university, was the architect of Milan’s Museo del Novecento, which opened in 2010 and houses mostly 20th century, Italian works.

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One of Rota’s last projects was the design of the Triennale exhibit “Italian Painting Today,” which closed in February and showcased the work of 120 of the most interesting Italian artists of different generations, born between 1960 and 2000.

Boeri told Italy’s national television broadcater RAI that Rota had been involved in the Triennale’s projects since the 1990s. “A piece of our history, of the history of our generation, of the history of the Triennale and of Italian creativity in the world is passing away,” Boeri added.

Museo del Novecento Milan
The Museo del Novecento in Milan.

Rota was born in 1953 in Milan. In the ’80s he moved to Paris, where he worked alongside late Italian architect Gae Aulenti for the design of the Orsay Museum in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art at the Center Pompidou, and the lighting of the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Together with Italian firm CRA-Carlo Ratti Associate and Matteo Gatto and F&M Ingegneria, his studio Italo Rota Building Office was involved in the design of the Italian pavilion at the Dubai Expo 2020. In the furnishings world, he designed the iconic Modestly Veiled chair for luxury Italian furniture-maker Driade and codesigned Artemide’s Calenda lamp.

In 2019, Salvatore Ferragamo presented “The World of Italo Rota,” an immersive exhibition into the creative universe of the great Italian architect and thinker. The event took place during Milan Design Week and unfolded throughout the men’s and women’s flagship stores in Via Montenapoleone.

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