GIAFRANCO FRATTINI

“Being so nomadic from one place to another, from one job to another” is the hallmark of the life of Gaetana Emilia Aulenti, “La Gae”: she made it her banner, proudly choosing “not to want to be a specialist in anything,” and devoted herself to architecture, theatre, and design with the same stubborn determination that she considered inherent, among other things, to the “female condition.” From the province of Udine, where she was born in 1927, she moved to Biella, then to Florence, and finally to Milan, where she graduated from the Politecnico in 1953, before bringing her projects to the entire world. With the same resolve, she also traversed ten years (1955–1965) at Casabella-Continuità with Ernesto Nathan Rogers, the only woman among his male disciples, enjoying a privileged vantage point on the architectural, urban, and above all critical scene of Italy at the time.