Gio Ponti
Gio Ponti (1891-1979), Italy. Gio Ponti (1891–1979) was one of Italy's most influential designers whose work includes automobiles, furniture, interiors, and buildings. Working in a multitude of materials, he is a pivotal figure in the history of twentieth-century architecture and design, and his work continues to inspire young designers who are increasingly rediscovering it today. Gio Ponti was born in Milan Italy on November 18th 1891. Gio Ponti graduated with a degree in architecture in 1921 from the Milan Polytechnic, and set up a studio with the architects Mino Fiocchi and Emilio Lancia in Milan. Gio Ponti was one of the most prolific and accomplished Italian architects/artists/designers of the 20th century. From the Richard-Ginori chinaware and the founding of Domus magazine in 1928, to the Pirelli tower erected in Milan in the 1950s to the "facade" architecture of the 1970's, Gio Ponti has been a major force in the shaping of twentieth-century Italian design. Gio Ponti created a vast output in interior and industrial design, decorative arts, and architecture. Gio Ponti had a lasting powerful influence on generations of Italian designers, his contributions to Italy's urban culture, and his role as a propagandist and editor. Gio Ponti was not only an architect but a poet, painter, polemicist, and designer of exhibitions, theater costumes, Venini glassware, Arthur Krupp tableware, Cassina furniture, FontanaArte lighting fixtures, and ocean liner interiors. He is perhaps best known as the architect of Milan's Pirelli tower, at one time the tallest building in Europe, and for his "Super-leggera" chair which was first manufactured in the '50s and has become classic because of its almost universal use in Italian restaurants. Above all, Ponti was responsible for the renewal of Italian architecture and decorative arts. Drawing upon the legacy of the Viennese Secession and the Wiener Werkstatte, he transformed "classical" language into a rationalist vocabulary. Gio Ponti's Pirellina Table Lamp for FontanaArte was shaped after his Pirelli tower in Milan. |