Gio Ponti

the long version

The work of Italian architect, artist, planner, craftsman, designer, and visionary Gio Ponti (1891-1979) is pivotal in the history of twentieth-century artistic culture. This remarkable book offers an extensive selection of Ponti's projects - over 150 of them - accompanied by designs, sketches, plans, photographs, and Ponti's own copious writings. Following an initial classical period of activity, Ponti went on to champion the importance of the individual during the overwhelming surge of mass-production promoted by Modernism. Ponti's writings in Domus during his long tenure as editor, and his designs for ceramics manufacturer Richard-Ginori, Alfa Romeo, the furniture company Cassina, fixtures-maker American Standard, and many other manufacturers, all testify to his vision for a modern society in which good design was available to the common person, and life, art, and architecture were inseparable. Gio Ponti also presents Ponti's architecture, including the famous Montecatini Building in Milan (1936), the interior of the luxury liner Andrea Doria (1951), the Pirelli Tower (1956), the Museum of Modern Art in Denver (1972), and numerous other residential and office buildings, churches, retail spaces, villas, and universities that Ponti designed between the early 1920s and 1978.