Born in Milan, Lombardy in 1902. Luigi Levi-Montalcini, nicknamed Gino, was an Italian architect and industrial designer. Son of an engineer and a painter, he was brother to Paola, also a painter, and Rita, a famous Nobel prize in Medicine. He graduated in architecture in 1925 from the Royal School of Engineering, that will later become the Polytechnic University of Turin. During the 1920s and 30s he became acquainted with many artists, intellectuals and architects, among which Giuseppe Pagano-Pogatschnig, with whom he started working in architecture. Together, they established themselves among the first and most representative members of the Rationalist movement in Italy. During WWII, he took refuge in Florence to escape from the anti-Jewish laws. Once the war was over, he contributed to postwar Reconstruction and from 1950s onwards, he increasingly focused on academic education, first a the Polytechnic University of Turin and then at the University of Palermo, the University of Padua and again in Turin, until 1972. Besides his activities as an architect and educator, he also always practiced as a sculptor and illustrator. He died in Turin, Piedmont in 1974.