After a classical schooling, he enrolled in at the Faculty of Architecture, at Politecnico in Milan, but did not graduate until the end of World War One, a period from which he took away several decorations, numerous watercolours of his companions in arms, and memories of Palladio architectures. After the war he was close to the group of “Milanese neo-classicists”.
Gio Ponti started his architecture practice in 1921. At the beginning, he adopted the principles of classically inspired architecture with his villa in Via Randaccio in Milan. He worked with Richard-Ginori ceramics factory, a collaboration that gave rise to a renewed kind of production.
In 1928 he founded, with Gianni Mazzocchi, the magazine Domus, a way to formulate and popularise new design and architecture ideas. The concept of “ltalianness” and his fascination for rationalist theories led him to conceive his first ”typical houses”, called “Domus”.
A different, colourful and repeatable idea of a city, to renew the concept of house inspired to the middle-class bourgeoisie, with a large living area, inexpensive materials and an evolution of liveability. Some of the most famous, those in Via Letizia and Via del Caravaggio in Milan. One of the Ponti’s most iconic symbol is the Pirelli skyscraper in Milan (1956-1961), a figure without vices, where rational architecture meets an industrial context, matching essentiality and lightness. Ponti loved his work: he documented, catalogued and photographed all his projects, but not to leave them in a showcase. Archiving was for him a very useful work tool on which he could continually intervene on and thanks to which today we do not forget his perpetual modern and traditionalist style at the same time.
“Architects should receive a great position. Engineers have, let’s say, problems to solve; architects have the problem of human life.”
