The Italian Cultural Institute of Tel Aviv, in collaboration with the Polytechnic of Milan, has organised a conference in Tel Aviv today at 18:30 (Italian time) entitled “Gio Ponti: the Arch-Italian”. Lecturer: Fulvio Irace, professor emeritus at the said Polytechnic.
Beginning with the recent exhibition “Gio Ponti: Loving Architecture” at the Maxxi Museum in Rome, Irace will provide a portrait of Gio Ponti, the “Milanese, Lombard, Italian” architect. The talk will focus in particular on Ponti’s architecture, the true embodiment of his theory of lightness as an expression of contemporary society. Although he was not a theorist, Ponti developed an original and organic poetics of design at the service of a changing society: the Pirelli skyscraper, the Italian Cultural Institute in Stockholm, the Der Bjienkorf warehouses in Eindhoven and Villa Planchart in Caracas are proof of his method, which ensured his status as best-known Italian architect abroad.
During the lecture, Irace will also examine some of Ponti’s last Milanese works, such as the Savoia Offices at Viale Famagosta, which demonstrate his extraordinary prophecy of a green Milan.
The Ponti lecture is part of the “Politech-Stories” cycle of streamed meetings, organised in collaboration with the Polytechnic of Milan. Through its lecturers, the Polytechnic tells stories focusing on polytechnic culture: stories of science, technology and creativity, of the achievements of its great masters, of future visions.
Gio Ponti (1891-1979), at the peak of his career, was the emblem of Italy rising from the ashes of the war and forcefully regaining its leading position in international post-war architecture. With his tireless activism, he became an advocate of Italian creativity in the world, convinced of a national supremacy that has nothing in common with today’s ideas of national sovereignty. Ponti started working at a very young age, in 1923, as art director for the famous Richard Ginori porcelain factory: from that moment on, for half a century, he never stopped exercising his incredible creative abilities in all the fields that opened up to his inexhaustible imagination.
Fulvio Irace is Professor Emeritus at the Milan Polytechnic. He has been a visiting lecturer at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio (Switzerland) and the Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona (Spain). Winner of the Bruno Zevi Prize for architectural criticism, he has been editor at Domus, Abitare and the weekend cultural supplement of the Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore. His scholarly work has resulted in the curatorship of major exhibitions in Italy and abroad and the publication of numerous books focusing on the role of 20th and 21st century Italian architecture in the international context.
