Gaetano Pesce, the critically acclaimed Italian architect and designer of thought-provoking furniture, has passed away in New York City at the age of 84. He will be remembered for a groundbreaking career that spanned six decades and saw his many designs scattered across four continents and collected by major worldwide institutions, including MoMA, Vitra Design Museum, and Centre Pompidou.

After beginning his career as an industrial designer in Italy in the 1960s, the 2023 Andrée Putman Lifetime Achievement Award winner turned into one of the leading figures behind the Radical Design movement. His contributions included the Up5 chair he made for B&B Italia, the Moloch floor lamp, and other artistic pieces that commented on politics and society through its heyday until the end of the 1970s. 

He would later move to New York to teach at Pratt Institute in 1980, a position he held in addition to running a simultaneous studio operation that continued in Paris until his death on Wednesday.

Select architectural designs completed after the move include the now-famous Organic Building in Osaka, Japan, a design some credit as influencing today's biophilia-riddled facade trends. 

His 1991 interior scheme for offices of the TBWA\Chiat\Day advertising agency in New York was also highly praised. Throughout his career, he was alternatively labeled as a "trouble-maker," the enfant terrible of the design world, and a valued social interventionist. Speaking to the New York Times, Murray Moss said aptly that his concepts "introduced the idea of mass customization" within the industry to which he was helping to disabuse an obsession with modernism's rigid dogmas.

"Over the course of six decades Gaetano revolutionized the worlds of art, design, architecture and the liminal spaces between these categories. His originality and nerve are matched by none," a statement published by his studio reads. "Despite dealing with health-related set backs, especially in the last year, Gaetano remained positive, playful and ever curious."

"I have a very clear idea about me, which is that I don’t know myself. Because I change. Tomorrow I can be different. This is my personality," Pesce said in a poignant note about his Putman Award win in December. "Thank you very much for recognizing that I exist with my work, and thank you very much for recognizing that my work has relevance in the field of culture."