Gio Ponti is an Italian architect, designer, painter, author, teacher and publisher. In a career spanning six decades, Gio Ponti built over a hundred buildings in Italy and the rest of the world, and designed a considerable number of decorative art and design objects, as well as furniture. Thanks to the magazine Domus, which he founded in 1928 and directed for most of his life, and his active participation in exhibitions such as the Milan Triennale, he was also an ardent defender of an Italian art of living and a major protagonist of the post-war revival of Italian design. A teacher at Milan’s Polytechnic from 1936 to 1961, he trained several generations of designers. Gio Ponti was also instrumental in the 1954 creation of one of design’s most important awards: the Compasso d’Oro prize. Gio Ponti died on September 16, 1979. His best-known works include the Pirelli Tower, built from 1956 to 1960 in Milan in collaboration with engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, the Villa Planchart in Caracas and the Superleggera chair, created for Cassina in 1957.
Gio Ponti
