Italo Rota
Architect, Studio Italo Rota & Partners
Italo Rota Building Office is an international architectural office based in Milano, Italy. With over thirty years of constant and advanced multidisciplinary research, IRBO develops innovative projects where humanistic beauty and sustainability are integrated in fields that extend to contemporary art and robotics. Aiming at the priority of achieving new living systems for the city of the “extreme present”, IRBO applies the most advanced technologies collaborating with labs, design firms and international universities. The office counts on the balance between art and science in its design research, creating a poetic manifestation that sustains the creation of projects with a new notion of beauty, a notion that according to Gardner “is the capacity of generating interest by a memorable form and an attitude of evoking further explorations.” IRBO was founded by Italo Rota (1953, Milano) who is a graduate of the polytechnic university of Milan. Upon winning the competition to design the interiors of Musée d’Orsay in the 80s, Rota moved to Paris working on many important projects in France among; the renovation of the museum of Contemporary art at the “Centre Pompidou”, with Gae Aulenti, the hall of the French school at Cour Carré of The Louvre museum, the lighting of Notre-Dame Cathedral, the lighting of the banks of the Seine river in Paris and the renovation of the historical center of the city of Nantes. Rota returned to Milano in the 90s to become one of the leading architects of a new architecture, designing important projects in Italy and the world. More recently, IRBO has designed the civic museums of Reggio Emilia, the new Elatech robot factory in Brembilla, the grand children theatre in Maciachini Milano, the new pavilion laboratory Noosphere at the Triennale di Milano, The pavilion of Kuwait at EXPO Milano 2015, the pavilion of Italian wine and the pavilion of Arts and Foods. Among IRBO’s symbolic projects, the Museo del Novecento in Piazza Duomo in Milan, the headquarters of Columbia University in New York, the Hindu Temple in Dolvy in India. The office worked on exhibitions in major museums, publications, installations and pavilions, including the Pavilion central theme for Expo Zaragoza 2008. Rota is the Scientific Director of NABA, New Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, lecturer at Shanghai Wusong International Art City Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Advisor at the Tsinghua University of Beijing, one of the most prestigious Chinese universities. Italo Rota has been awarded several prizes, including the Gold Medal for Italian Architecture for the spaces public, the Gold Medal to the Italian Architecture for Culture and Leisure, the Landmark Conservancy Prize, New York and the Grand Prix de l'Urbanisme, Paris.