Gio Ponti

Italy (1891-1979)

Born in Milan in 1891, Gio Ponti has profoundly marked the century and opened the perspectives of a new art of living, creating spaces that have revolutionized architecture and given its rise to design. After graduating in 1921, he joined forces with Emilio Lancia and Mino Fiocchi from 1927 to 1933. In 1928, he created the magazine Domus, which focuses on architecture, art and design, and is still published today. In the late 1920s, Ponti built houses in Milan and Paris, including domus, which resembled typical Milanese houses from the outside, but had innovative interiors, with flexible spaces and modular furniture. During the 1950s, Ponti made a growing amount of industrial design, including the Distex armchair (1953) and the Superleggera chair (1957). It also built one of the most emblematic buildings of Milan of the twentieth century, the Pirelli tower of 1956.