Vittorio Gregotti, Italian Neo-Avant Garde architect, has died from COVID-19

Vittorio Gregotti, the noted Italian architect who helped initiate the inaugural architecture section of the Venice Biennale in the late 1970s, has passed away due to complications arising from COVID-19, The Guardian reports.

Gregotti was born in 1927 and was educated at the Politecnico di Milanoin the early 1950s. As a deeply political and concerned designer, Gregotti worked across genres, including as an architect, writer, editor, and curator and was a notable member of the Italian Communist Party. 

In 1976, Gregotti became the director of the Visual Arts Section of the Biennale, a role that he used to institute a more significant architectural focus for the exhibition. He was the director of the 1978 Biennale and created an exhibition around the theme of Utopia and the Crisis of Anti-Nature: Architectural Intentions in Italy.

Gregotti also built several significant commissions, including the...