Gio Ponti Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Gio Ponti (1891-1979) was an Italian architect, industrial designer, artist and publisher, and one of the most influential figures of twentieth century Italian design. He founded the magazine Domus in 1928, designed porcelain, furniture, interiors and ships, and built the Pirelli Tower in Milan with the engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, a slender skyscraper with tapering sides that became a symbol of Italy’s postwar boom.

Milan and Richard-Ginori

Ponti was born in Milan in 1891 and, after serving in the First World War, graduated in architecture from the Politecnico di Milano in 1921. From 1923 to 1930 he was artistic director of the porcelain maker Richard-Ginori, modernising its production with neoclassical motifs.

Domus and the Montecatini building

In 1928 he founded Domus, which he edited for most of his life and used to promote modern architecture and design in Italy. His buildings of the 1930s, such as the first Montecatini office building in Milan (1936-1938) and the School of Mathematics at the University of Rome, combined modern planning with classical refinement. He taught at the Politecnico from 1936 to 1961.

Pirelli, Superleggera and the world

After the war Ponti designed the Superleggera chair for Cassina (1957), weighing under two kilos, and the Pirelli Tower in Milan (1956-1960), engineered by Nervi. He built the Villa Planchart in Caracas, the Taranto Cathedral, with its pierced sail facade, and the Denver Art Museum (1971), wrapped in reflective grey tiles.

Legacy

Ponti died in Milan in 1979. He designed more than a hundred buildings and thousands of objects, and his archive and the many reissues of his furniture keep his work in daily use.