Museums to Boutiques : Italian Designer Has Wide Range of Works

One would expect Gae Aulenti--the Italian woman who designed the glamorous, internationally acclaimed new Musee d’Orsay in Paris--to be someone rather sleek, severe and splendidly coutured.

All of the Milan-based designer’s projects, in a career spanning three decades, share a refinement of detail and a sleekness of conception.

In reality, Aulenti is a sweet, unmanicured grandmother given to wearing a uniform of austere blue serge suits.

On a visit to Los Angeles to make a presentation of her projects at the recent Westweek design conference and to oversee the completion of a boutique she crafted for New York-based fashion designer Adrienne Vitadini at 319 N. Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, Aulenti revealed in an interview that she got around the tough French construction crews working on the d’Orsay by appealing to their filial instincts.

Former Train Station

“As a woman and a foreigner, my ploy was to have them think of me as their mother, whom they must please,” she said. “That’s how I got my way.”

The Musee d’Orsay is a remarkable 1986 transformation of a 1900 Parisian railroad terminal into a museum of art and architecture.

The new museum, a series of skillfully planned and detailed pavilions and enclosures inserted into the old Gare d’Orsay’s elaborate turn-of-the-century cast-iron structure, has been hailed by many arts professionals as one of the best modern display spaces to be found anywhere.

“We looked at the old station as a contemporary object, without history,” Aulenti wrote in Architecture and Urbanism magazine. “We regarded the original architect, Victor Laloux, as a companion in the metamorphosis of the station into a museum.”

Wide Design Range

Aulenti’s range is wide. It includes set designs for opera at Milan’s La Scala, the landscaping of a garden in a Tuscan villa, furniture, showrooms for Olivetti and Fiat in several cities.

Also, the installation of a National Museum of Modern Art in the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the restoration of the Venice, Italy, Palazzo Grassi as an art museum, the conversion of an old Italian embassy in Berlin into an Academy of Science, the restoration of the Barcelona, Spain, 1929 Exposition Hall as a Catalan Museum (timed to open for the 1992 Olympics), as well as large-scale urban design projects in Milan.

“In Italy, designers are free to tackle projects of any size, from silverware to cities,” Aulenti said, switching between Italian and a halting but articulate English.

“In America, design is so compartmentalized. Architects seldom design stage sets, interior designers never plan neighborhoods. These rigid divisions seem very strange to me.”

Westweek Appearance

Making her presentation at Westweek, Aulenti received a standing ovation from an audience that overflowed the West Hollywood Auditorium.

During a slide show of her work she talked of her need for “extravagance and risk, that keeps you alive, as a person and as a designer.”

Her pale gray-blue eyes lit up with the fires of enthusiasm as she declared that “for me, religion means the science of human things. In the d’Orsay, I considered the art masterpieces as persons worthy of respect in a religious setting suited to their status.”

On her first visit to Los Angeles in 20 years, Aulenti was impressed by the urban landscape. “Los Angeles is beautiful,” she said. “The people are very simpatico.

Saw Her Project

“I like the architecture of Frank Gehry, and I want to see the Hockney show (at the L.A. County Museum of Art). I like Los Angeles, but it is also very strange to me, I must admit. So different from Milan!”

Aulenti’s visit here afforded her her first sight of the completed Beverly Hills boutique--her only U.S. commission. Fabricated in Italy under her supervision, the display cases were shipped and assembled on site.

The Vitadini boutique’s carefully contrived and understated elegance is very Italian. The restraint of the front facade’s gray geometric glazing mullions and white stucco is echoed by the bleached-oak interior. A curved ceiling, reflected in a wall-to-wall back mirror, is lit by subtle recessed lights.

Aulenti maintains design offices, in Milan and Barcelona, with a total of 30 assistants. The office she opened in Paris during the 7 years she worked on the Musee d’Orsay was moved to Barcelona in 1986 to handle the Catalan Museum project.

Trained at the Milan Polytechnic, Aulenti was on the editorial staff of Casabella magazine for several years before taking teaching posts at architectural schools in Venice and Italy. Winning the 1980 international competition for the Musee d’Orsay launched her into global prominence.