Verscheidene auteurs - Gio Ponti - 202

Gio Ponti

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Giovanni (Giò) Ponti (Milan, 18 November 1891 – same place, 16 September 1979) was an Italian architect, writer and industrial designer.

"In his more than sixty-year career he designed furniture, utilitarian objects and buildings. Famous buildings by his hand include the Pirelli Tower in Milan (together with Pier Luigi Nervi), the Palazzo Liviano in Padua, the Denver Art Museum (North Building) and the De Bijenkorf department store in Eindhoven. Because of his influence and the diversity of topics across various disciplines, he is also called the ‘father of modern Italian design’."

Life
Giovanni Ponti was born in Milan on 18 November 1891. He began studying architecture at the Polytechnic University of Milan (Politecnico di Milano), but this was interrupted by his conscription during World War I. After he graduated in 1921, he started an architectural practice with Mino Fiocchi and Emilio Lancia. His work was first exhibited in 1923 at the Biennale of Decorative Arts in Monza, after which he became a member of the executive committee involved in organizing the Milan Triennials. In the same year he began as artistic director at the ceramic manufacturer Manifattura Ceramica Richard Ginori, where he had a major influence on product innovation. In 1925 his works for this manufacturer were shown at the International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, where they were very well received.
With Emilio Lancia he founded Studio Ponti-Lancia in 1926. In this period Ponti's work was strongly influenced by the Novecento Italiano, an art movement that fit within Benito Mussolini’s fascist ideology. This style is evident, among other things, in the design of his private residence at Via Randaccio 9 in Milan (1925) and the interior of the Palazzo Contini-Bonacossi in Florence (1931).[4]
Around 1927 a new stylistic movement emerged in Italy, the Movimento Italiano per l’Architettura Razionale, Italian rationalism, which made use of new developments in building technology. Ponti was a follower of this new style and he had a large influence on the further development of the movement. He did this, among other things, through the magazine Domus which he founded in 1928 and wrote about design and architecture, and his involvement with the Milan Triennials.
In 1933 he started Studio Ponti-Fornaroli-Soncini with engineers Antonio Fornaroli and Eugenio Soncini. In that same year he wrote the book La Casa all’Italiana ('The House in Italian Style') in which he stated that Italian houses, despite stylistic innovations and changes, should not lose their Italian character. Between 1931 and 1936 he was involved in the design of the Domus houses in Milan. These houses had a typical Milanese external architectural style, but had modern and innovative interiors emphasizing flexibility and modular furniture. Ponti believed the interior should adapt to the person, not the other way around. In 1936 he designed the first Palazzo Montecatini; a modern apartment building for which he was involved for the first time in both the building design and the interior and furniture design. That same year he was appointed professor and permanent staff at the Faculty of Architecture at the Polytechnic University of Milan, a position he held until 1961.
In the 1940s Ponti was not very active architecturally, but focused on writing, industrial design and painting. In 1941 he left the magazine Domus he had founded and started the magazine Stile, to which he remained attached until 1947. In 1948 he became editor-in-chief of Domus again.
From the 1950s his architectural efforts rose again. During this period he traveled widely and designed, among other things, two villas in Caracas in the mid-1950s, several government offices in Baghdad (1958) and an auditorium in the Time & Life Building (1959) in New York. The composition within his office changed in this period. After the entry of Alberto Rosselli in 1954 the name changed to Studio Ponti-Fornaroli-Rosselli. He remained active at home as well: he was responsible for the design of the Pirelli Tower (1955-1958) in Milan. The building, with 32 stories, was at that time the tallest building in Europe. During this period he was also active for the Jsa factory, where he designed textiles from 1950 through 1958.

During his career Ponti worked for more than 120 companies. He died in Milan on 16 September 1979.

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