Amate l'Architettura

A classic of architecture reproposed in a new edition faithful to the original 1957 edition, conceived by Giò Ponti himself as a small pocket-sized architecture. Giò Ponti, says James Plaut in the preface to the large volume that Aria d'Italia dedicated to him, is among the other excellent architects that Italy has today, both mature and very young, a complex figure because of the activity - extensive and passionate - that characterises him.

In his Milan studio in Via Dezza, in collaboration with Fornaroli and Rosselli, he designed and worked on projects for Milan, Padua, the centre of Voghera, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Baghdad, Stockholm and Caracas, houses, clinics, office buildings, hotels, schools, power stations, the fitting out of ships (the Andrea Doria), the Carmelo in Sanremo, churches, the coordination of satellite cities, consultancy for Paris, for Lourdes, the organisation of exhibitions abroad, the development of an international industrial design activity, etc.

He created Domus and brought it to its current efficiency; he made a powerful contribution to the Milan Triennale and - with works and writings - to the development of design for industry in Italy; he was awarded the national Compasso d'Oro prize for this. His activity also extended to set designs for La Scala, to the painting of large frescoes in Padua; he wrote books Someone who claims to refer everything to the past usually calls him - due to the singular extension of his work in various fields - an ancient Italian - Why not a modern Italian? - replies Ponti - or rather simply an Italian? Ponti is very proud to belong to that number of Italians who are giving splendour to Italy today, in the arts, in architecture and in every other field.

To those who ask him whether he is not interested in the splendour of the past, he replies yes, but also - and more so - in the splendour of the future, the one for which we alone work, so that it equals the splendour of the past in which we can do nothing. If he also brought his own contribution to modern Italian architecture, he attributes to whom goes the great merit, and not his own, of that first movement for modern architecture in Italy that determined its decisive development.

In Domus, he contributed and continues to contribute to the recognition of all the new figures of architects and artists; in his buildings, he worked in constant collaboration with artists he loved, starting, to say the most famous, with Campigli.