Italo Rota, the architect of the Museo del Novecento in Milan, has died. He was 71 years old

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The architect of the twentieth century museum Italo Rota died in Milan, where he was born in 1953. The president of Triennale Milano Stefano Boeri tells ANSA, explaining that there will certainly be a “chamber of death in the Triennale, which is his home”.

Who was Italo Rota

One of the most interesting and multifaceted figures on the Italian architectural scene, Italo Rota graduated in 1982 from the Polytechnic of Milan, training first in the studio of Franco Albini and later in that of Vittorio Gregotti. At the end of the eighties, he moved to Paris, where he designed the renovation of the Museum of Modern Art at the Center Pompidou with Gae Aulenti, the new rooms of the French school at the Cour Carré of the Louvre, the lighting of the Notre Dame cathedral and along the Seine and the renovation of the center of Nantes.

He returned to Italy in the mid-1990s and the activity of his new Milanese studio began to range from masterplan to product design, in projects characterized by the choice of innovative materials, cutting-edge technologies and in-depth research on light. Standing out in his production are 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 created internationally, such as the Casa Italiana at Columbia University, New York (1997); the Hindu Temple in Mumbai (2009); the Chameleon Club at Byblos Hotel, Dubai (2011).

The memory of Boeri

«We are losing a friend and a very important person in the last years of Italian culture. A sophisticated man with an unexpected and original thought. It is a huge loss for Triennale”: this is how the president of Triennale Stefano Boeri remembers Italo Rota. «He started working at the Triennale when he was thirty and never stopped. There are countless displays, ideas, books and catalogs on architecture. His last contribution – he concludes – was the exhibition on Italian painting for which he curated an installation”.