In Memoriam

In Memoriam: Vittorio Gregotti

It is with deep regret that we acknowledge the passing of Vittorio Gregotti (1927-2020), an MIT Press author and celebrated architect. Gregotti was 92 and died of complications due to COVID-19.

An accomplished author, he wrote thirty books, including Inside Architecture, published by the MIT Press, which examines the role the modernist project played in late twentieth-century building and the negative impact mass culture has had on the environment. Throughout his career, Gregotti taught at universities in Venice, Milan, and Palermo.

“Vittorio Gregotti was perhaps the personification of the very best kind of architect, and a figure who understood his professional responsibilities as giving him access to a multiplicity of different roles — the architect as builder, the architect as thinker, the architect as teacher, writer, editor, or as public intellectual,” said Thomas Weaver, Senior Acquisitions Editor for Art and Architecture at the MIT Press. “The ease with which he navigated between these different domains, even in the course of a single day, bears witness to the elasticity of the discipline that he represented so brilliantly, but more than anything else it also reflected his underlying intelligence and generosity. He will be hugely missed, but his buildings, drawings, books, magazines articles, and lectures, and the image of the architect that he projected, will always remain.”

Born on August 10, 1927, in Novara, Italy, Gregotti became interested in architecture after a visit to Paris in 1947, when he met with French architect Auguste Perret. Gregotti went on to study architecture at the Polytechnic University of Milan in 1952 and later founded his firm, Gregotti Associatti International. The firm completed many influential architecture projects, including the Barcelona Olympic Stadium, the Arcimboldi Opera Theater in Milan, Belém Cultural Center in Lisbon, and several university campuses. Gregotti was a member of the Italian Neo-Avant Garde and a key figure in 1970s Postmodernism.

He will be missed.