Gae Aulenti & Piero Castiglioni Biography
Gae Aulenti & Piero Castiglioni
Gae Aulenti (1927 - 2012) was a prolific Italian architect and furniture designer, known for transforming the Gare d'Orsay railway station in Paris into the Musée d'Orsay. Inspired by Le Corbusier, Aulenti sought to distinguish herself from the dominant modernist aesthetic and encouraged individual expression in her designs of lamps, coffee tables, chairs and buildings. Born on December 4, 1927 in Palazzolo dello Stella, Italy, Aulenti was one of two twenty-year-olds in her graduating class to graduate with a degree in architecture from the Polytechnic University of Milan in 1954. She spent much of her life challenging the modern and fashionable , which earned her the attention of Fiat and the main design houses in Milan. Aulenti won the International Grand Prix for Arrival at the Sea at the 1964 Milan Triennale in the Italian Pavilion, and later served on the Triennale board. His works are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others.
Piero Castiglioni (1944 - ) light designer likes to define himself as an "electrician before being an architect". His projects are the consequence of long and thoughtful research conducted in the field, within the architectural space, thanks to a solid technical-scientific culture and an empirical attitude. In 1972 the studio was founded in Milan in Via Presolana 5, so Piero Castiglioni joined his father Livio and began the collaboration. They produced the first handcrafted luminaires, using the new "naked" halogen lamps suspended on cables, which exploited the environment itself as a lighting diffuser: the Scintilla system was born with its sparkle. In 1979 Piero Castiglioni began working as a light designer for Fontana Arte, with Gae Aulenti as art director and Pierluigi Cerri image consultant. In 1983, artisanal production ceased within the studio in Via Presolana, the rights to the "Scintilla System" were sold to Fontana Arte and thus industrial production began. The method of the light designer Piero Castiglioni is characterized by the free reading of the project in its context without preconceptions. The methods of intervention are suggested by a careful reading of the context: in Paris, the Musèe d'Orsay, Palazzo Grassi in Venice and the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood in St. Petersburg, are all the result of an experimentation with new forms aimed at create a culture of enlightenment. Together with Gae Aulenti, Piero Castiglioni designed the "Parola" line in 1980, produced by FontanaArte, i.e. a family of lamps that represent exemplary models of technical integration between craftsmanship and industry.
