“Pure architecture is a crystal. When it is pure, it is clear like a crystal – magic, closed, exclusive, autonomous, unsullied, absolute, conclusive like a crystal.”
– Gio Ponti

. . .¨

Gio Ponti (1891-1979) wore many hats in his splendid, fabled career. Not only was he one of the most important and influential Italian architects of the 20th century, joyful and generous, but he made an indelible mark on everything he touched from industrial and furniture design, to painting and publishing (he was founder and lifelong editor of the seminal Domus magazine). One cannot visit Milan today without seeing and feeling his handiwork, light touch and genius everywhere, from the stunning Pirelli Tower – “She is so beautiful I want to marry her,” Ponti told his daughters when she was finished – to the modernist Case Tipiche residences scattered all over Milan.

Taschen has just published Ponti, a compact, beautifully illustrated biography of Gio Ponti as part of its ongoing Basic Architecture series (edited by Peter Gössel). With over 100 images, including photographs, sketches, drawings and floor plans, and illuminating text by Italian architect and writer Graziella Roccella, Ponti offers a wonderful overview of this genuine Renaissance man’s life and work.

Indeed, Ponti is viewed as the godfather of Italy´s postwar design renaissance. Nothing he did lacked exuberance, and he saw the use of beautiful design as a means of enjoying la dolce vita – the sensual Italian good life. With the founding of Domus in 1928, Ponti quickly established himself as one of Europe´s most influential voices in architecture and design. Starting off with ceramics and majolica works at the First International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Monza, he moved on to furniture and interior design and built structures of all kinds, from small residential dwellings to high-rise buildings, schools and office blocks.

This book provides a detailed introduction to Ponti´s creative process and gives an overview of the various phases of his career. He never stopped developing, reinventing and refreshing his style. A brief list of his career and production is truly breathtaking. From 1923 to 1930, he worked at the Manifattura Ceramica in Milan and Sesto Fiorentino, changing the company´s entire output. One of his great interests was the theme of the home, for which he continually sought to find new solutions. His airy, colourful, sometimes whimsical, but always elegant spaces were designed to inspire optimism and enthusiasm in their occupants.

But not content with creating mere spaces, he also sought to fill them with beautiful objects. He designed a line of furnishings for the Rinascente department stores, under the name Domus Nova, which included majolica vases, porcelain, sanitary ware (like sinks, toilets, bidets), lamps, glass bottles, coffee machines and chairs. In 1957 he came up with arguably his most famous chair, the Superleggera (Superlight), which was very strong but also so light that a child could lift it with one finger.

And "master of lightness" is a fitting epithet for Ponti. He exported his light, sensuous vision of la dolce vita – soft colours, exuberant patterns – to Caracas, where he built the beautiful 1955 Villa Planchart, which still hovers above the city at night and the Villa Areaza, Caracas in 1956. The interior of the Villa Areaza is featured on the book cover, and rightfully so. The photographs of it may be the most arresting in the book, not only because of the structure’s singular beauty – delicate and ebullient as a blue and white butterfly – but also because it has since been demolished.

Ponti the standard-bearer of Italian design remained productive throughout the 1960s and ´70s – notably building the ´64 San Francesco Church, ´67 San Carlo Chapel in Milan and the ´72 Denver Art Museum – but his most productive and ingenious days were behind him. A decade after his death, daughter Lisa summarized his career as follows: "Sixty years of work, buildings in thirteen countries, lectures in twenty-four, twenty-five years of teaching, fifty years of editing, articles in every one of the five hundred and sixty issues of his magazines, two thousand five hundred letters dictated, two thousand letters drawn, designs for a hundred and twenty enterprises, one thousand architectural sketches." A great deal indeed from one man.

PONTI
Master of Lightness
Graziella Roccella
Taschen
96 pages
$9.99

For more excellent Taschen books on Architecture:

The latest in Taschen´s growing Architecture Now! series, this volume takes us on a fantastic visual voyage to houses of distinction from around the world. Beyond the fundamental notion of shelter, what defines a house? From postmodern castles to hi-tech cabins, here is a connoisseur´s choice of the world´s most remarkable new houses, from deepest Patagonia to the Sydney suburbs, via the USA, Europe, Scandinavia and Asia.

ARCHITECTURE NOW! HOUSES
Philip Jodidio
416 pages
$39.99
Multilingual Edition: English, French, German

This sixth installment of Architecture Now! features buildings ranging from Terunobu Fujimori’s tiny (6.07 square metres) Teahouse Tetsu to Foster’s gigantic Crystal Island in Moscow (1.1 million square metres), providing an overview of today´s architecture, from traditional to radically avant-garde. Architecture Now! 6 is the reference for what´s happening now and what´s to come. Easy-to-navigate, illustrated A–Z entries include current and recent projects, biographies, contact information and websites.

ARCHITECTURE NOW 6
Philip Jodidio
576 pages ¨$39.99
Multilingual Edition: English, French, German

Salvatore Difalco is senior writer at TORO.