In 2006 he won the gold medal for Italian Architecture for public spaces for having designed the “skittles” of the Foro Italico, or the bollards, also called “princesses”. Italo Rota, a famous architect who, among other things, designed the Museo del Novecento in Piazza Duomo in Milan, has died at the age of 70. The confirmation of his death, which occurred recently in Milan, comes from the president of the Triennale, and colleague, Stefano Boeri.
“With Italo Rota 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. 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 wrote in a post.
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 masterplans 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 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).
source MilanoToday
