© Michele Nastasi

With the passion for design that only a Milanese can have, Italo Rota lived his life entirely devoted to creating whatever he was asked to, whether furniture pieces, books, pavilions, or museums. And with equal relish he put together an impressive Wunderkammer of objects with which he later mounted brilliant exhibitions. With reason the Triennale – flagship of design italiano – took the lead in paying him homage when he died in 2024, hosting his pre-funeral wake. And this year another great cultural institution of the country, the Venice Biennale, has decided to cap his trajectory with a posthumous Golden Lion. The curator, Carlo Ratti, thus celebrates the transversality that his Venetian event takes pride in, and in the process he honors a dear friend: a partial gesture that raises the question of whether a local figure like Rota is the ideal recipient of an award of such wide reach, but does not diminish the talent of one of the last masters that the capital of taste has produced.