Gae Aulenti 1927-2012
News: Italian architect and designer Gae Aulenti, best known for the interior design of Paris art gallery the Musée d'Orsay, has died at the age of 84.
Aulenti trained as an architect in Milan, but over the course of her career also designed furniture, exhibitions, lighting and scenography. After graduating, she joined the staff of design magazine Casabella as an art director and also taught architecture in Milan and Venice.
From the 1960s onwards she designed a number of pieces for Italian furniture brands including La Rinascente, Zanotta and FontanaArte.
Aulenti's designs for the Musée d'Orsay in the 1980s lead to many other gallery commissions, including a space for the National Museum of Modern Art at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the restoration of the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona.
The architect had suffered from a long illness and passed away at her Milan home on 31 October.