In northern Italy, coronavirus is taking perhaps the highest toll in Europe. Vittorio Gregotti died yesterday in a Milan hospital, where his wife is still being held.
Vittorio Gregotti was born in Novara in 1927. After graduating from the Milan Polytechnic, he began working for the architectural magazine Casabella, of which he soon became editor-in-chief. In the 1970s he created his own design office, Gregotti Associati International. From under this banner came the design of the Belém Cultural Center in Lisbon, the Grand Théâtre de Provence in France, the Arcimboldi Opera House in Milan and the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium in Barcelona, among others.
Gregotti's work didn't stop there, however. In 1975, he curated an exhibition organized by the Venice Biennale entitled "A proposito del Mulino Stucky," in which he considered the future of an abandoned Venetian granary building. This event heralded the creation of the architectural section of the festival (which happened in 1980). A year later he took over as director of the visual arts section, expanding the festival's theme to include architecture, among other things. Two years later, he was director of the Biennale entitled "Utopia and the crisis of anti-nature: architectural intentions in Italy."
Vittorio Gregotti was not only an architect, urban planner and lecturer. He contributed to the development of culture in Italy and around the world with his work.
