The following is taken from an obituary for Gae Aulenti that originally appeared in The Guardian.
Gae Aulenti was the Italian architect of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and a prolific designer of furniture, lighting and theatre sets. Gae was one of the few women working in architecture and design in postwar Italy and her talents found a vast range of outlets, from showrooms for Fiat and Olivetti to sets for La Scala, the opera house in Milan, to private villas for the rich. But it is for her work in museums and exhibition design that she was best known – and for her largest project, which also proved to be her most divisive.
She was chosen in 1981 to convert the Beaux Arts-style Gare d'Orsay railway station in Paris into a new home for impressionist art. Her proposal transformed the cavernous central hall, a magnificent barrel-vaulted train shed lit by arching rooflights, into an open exhibition space, with the insertion of modern industrial materials. Original cast-iron beams and plaster rosettes were contrasted with wire mesh partitions and new rough stone walls, on which the collection, of mainly French art from 1848 to 1915, was daringly hung.
On graduating from Milan Polytechnic in 1954 (as one of only two women in a class of 20), she joined Casabella magazine and quickly became part of the "Neo Liberty" movement. Reacting against the dominance of modernism and the monotonous legacy of the Bauhaus, it argued for a revival of local building traditions and individual expression – something that Gae pursued in all aspects of her life, as a fierce opponent of fashion: "The moment it's loudly announced that red is in fashion, " she once told Women's Wear Daily, "I want to dress in green. "
Throughout the 60s and 70s, Aulenti produced furniture for Milan's major design houses, including Knoll, Zanotta and Kartell, as well as lighting for Artemide, Stilnovo and Martinelli Luce. One of her most famous pieces, a coffee table in the form of a thick square of glass supported on four black casters, is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.