Gio Ponti. Scene and design, one way

In little more than three five-year periods - between 1937 and 1954 - while consolidating his status as an architect, Gio Ponti designed seven theatre productions for ballet, drama and opera, demonstrating that designing a costume, taking a photograph, designing a table or a building are all part of the same aesthetic, defining the line of artistic continuity proper to each architect.

These works, far from being a mere amateur's divertissement, place Ponti in the position of the classical architect or, as he called himself, the 'last of the Humanists'.

In-depth investigation in the private archives of his heirs and research into period documents published in particular in the magazines Domus and Stile edited and conceived by Ponti himself have made it possible to verify how chandeliers, sofas, other objects as well as exhibition and domestic spaces that are well-known today, have in the stage their test bench before being translated into everyday life and becoming design icons.