Gae Aulenti

Gae Aulenti (pronounced [ˈɡaːe auˈlɛnti]; December 4, 1927 – October 31, 2012) was a prolific female Italian architect, whose work spans industrial and exhibition design, furnature, graphics, stage design, lighting and interior design. She was well known for several large-scale museum projects, including the Musée d'Orsay in Paris (1980–86), the Contemporary Art Gallery at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Palazzo Grassi in Venice (1985–86), and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (2000–2003). Aulenti was one of the few women designing in the postwar period in Italy, where Italian designers sought to make meaningful connections to production principles beyond Italy. This avant-guarde design movement blossomed into an entirely new type of Italian architecture, one full of imaginary utopias leaving standardization to the past.