Lella Vignelli: Architect and Designer (PDF)
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Luca Vignelli
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Summary
This document details the life and career highlights of Lella Vignelli, a prominent architect and designer. It focuses on her professional journey and describes the challenges she faced, mainly regarding gender discrimination in the design field. Her life and work provide insights into the evolution of architectural and design fields.
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Prof. Emeritus Roger Remington presented on the life and work of Lella Vignelli to RIT students on April 17, 2023. Following the lecture he reached out to the Vignellis’ children, Valentina and Luca, and forwarded a question that was asked by one of the students: toward the toward the end of her car...
Prof. Emeritus Roger Remington presented on the life and work of Lella Vignelli to RIT students on April 17, 2023. Following the lecture he reached out to the Vignellis’ children, Valentina and Luca, and forwarded a question that was asked by one of the students: toward the toward the end of her career, did Lella feel fulfilled by her accomplishments? For Roger Remington’s students at RIT. Personal fulfillment is an internal feeling that is not always outwardly, or publicly, perceptible, while personal accomplishments are there for everyone to see. Lella always knew her worth, and she took her accomplishments in stride, they were all hard won through hard work, and there was always more work to do. She never stopped to pat herself on the back. She accepted praise, and accolades, with grace, humility, and a pinch of salt, and knew that success was only obtainable through perseverance, challenging herself and those around her to do better, to keep going, to do the necessary work, to finish the job, and then move on to the next. Lella was the last of four children, the “whoopsie baby” seven years younger than her nearest sibling, three of whom, including Lella, studied and became architects, like their father Provino Valle with whom her siblings Nani and Gino Valle worked before establishing their own practices. As a student at the IUAV, the university of architecture in Venice, Italy, Lella studied under Carlo Scarpa and Ignazio Gardella among others and excelled, earning the respect of her fellow students, whom she selflessly aided in their work and studies. As a stellar young architecture student she won a prestigious scholarship to study a year abroad at MIT in Cambridge, MA. In 1957, the year she married Massimo, three years her senior, who incidentally had failed to graduate from the same University of Venice and had gone straight to work at Venini glassworks. It was this year abroad that first brought them to America and changed both of their lives forever. After their first year in America, they decided to stay on longer as Massimo was offered a teaching position at IIT, Illinois Institute of Technology, in Chicago and Lella was offered a job as a junior architect at Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM) at a time when there were very few women in a male dominated field. In 1960 Lella and Massimo returned to Italy and settled in Milan where they opened their own studio “The Design Office of Lella and Massimo Vignelli”, the name of the business itself announcing the equality of their partnership, regardless of gender and free of hierarchy. However, from the very beginning Lella took on more responsibilities than Massimo ever would or could, because while Massimo was a brilliant salesman, a visionary graphic, industrial, product, interior designer, and design theorist, Lella was all that plus a licensed architect and the woman who ran the business end of their shared endeavor. Soon after, with my birth in 1962 and that of my sister in 1966, her workload would only increase, running a busy household on top of everything else. When my parents moved to the US in December of 1965 to set up the New York offices of Unimark International, a design company that would become the first and largest multinational design firm in the world during its brief existence, Lella was shocked by the pervading sexism in the field that she had never experienced before in Italy. In Italy it is common to this day for those who have obtained advanced degrees in many particular fields, regardless of their gender, to be addressed by their professional title, much as in the US we address medical doctors as Dr. Soand-so, or professors as Prof. So-and-so, in Italy Lella was referred to as Architect Vignelli, as a sign of respect and a recognition of accomplishment, social rank, and education. In the US Lella was dismayed to realize that people treated her as just the pretty wife of a young and successful designer, her husband. When she would show up at an interiors job site, to supervise the implementation of her own designs, the contractors in hard hats would feign to listen to her for a bit and then ask her when her boss was going to show up. At client meetings in Lella and Massimo’s office, where she naturally would take notes on what was discussed, new clients would assume she was Massimo’s secretary and ask her to go get them some coffee. Even Unimark, the company her husband founded, forbade married couples from working in the same office so she was hired as an outside consultant even on projects for which she was the lead architect/designer. To add insult to injury, the design and architecture press would often credit Massimo alone for work they had done in partnership, or Massimo alone for work she alone had done! The indignities she suffered were many and it would take more than a decade in America, she would say two decades, for the public to recognize her contributions and for her to gain the respect for her work that she had so freely enjoyed as a young woman in Italy. Needless to say, this would not deter her, nothing could, for she was a born leader, mentor, and an example for all women, regardless of their chosen field. Throughout her life Lella “wore many hats”, wife, mother, designer, architect, business woman, judge and critic, international beauty, role model and mentor, and even an excellent chef. She did so both out of ambition she shared with Massimo, and necessity, and with great joy, headaches and problems be damned, they would pass, or she would plow right through them. Her satisfaction came in getting things done, thus clearing the slate for the next task ahead. Did she ever set goals for herself, landmarks to pass on the way forward in time? Honestly, I don’t think she had the time to dream, though she loved a good book, a novel or biography, perhaps reveling in the dreams and lives of others, not stopping to think that for others her own life was a dream come true. She had dreams for her children, her friends, her co-workers and employees, even her clients, all of whom she would listen to closely, and then push, cajole, and advise daily to turn them into their own realities of self fulfillment. Having fully realized her own potential she always wanted for, and helped others, to do the same. It’s difficult, however, to say how Lella felt personally toward the end of her career with any certainty, as her mind, and her health began the slow fade into dementia at around the age of 75 that would end her life at 82 years old. Towards the early middle stage of this terrible decline, when she was still speaking intelligibly, she evidently had some “unfinished business” with Massimo in conversations that I witnessed. These were funny, tragic, and telling, in that she would insist that she alone had designed much of the work they had done together, even projects that Massimo had done on his own. It spoke to me of how tightly wound together they were in life, and work, and love. It spoke to me of her pride in her own and their work, and it spoke to me of the pain she had endured when credit was not given her that was her due. All in all, yes, Lella must have felt personally fulfilled by her accomplishments, that’s what kept her going, even when at times her workload was overwhelming and she would come home and just collapse and go to bed early, the next morning she was ready to do it all over again. Lella in foreground, Massimo behind her wearing hat, IUAV University of Venice Architecture School, trip to Greece 1954, with teachers Franco Albini, Ignazzio Gardella, and Alberto Samonà, with fellow students, Giacomo Leone, Gigetta Tamaro and Franca Helg (A teacher at IUAV and Albini’s partner), etc.