Architect: Gio Ponti

Location: via Dezza, Milan, Italy

Year: 1957

Casa Ponti was an 8th floor apartment in a building located on via Dezza in Milan. The building itself was designed by Gio Ponti together with Antonio Fornaroli and Alberto Rosselli and was completed in 1957. The apartment was Ponti’s home for more than 20 years until his death.

The residence was a showcase for several of Ponti’s architectural principles and innovations, summarized here in three sections:

Open Plan
The apartment was conceived as a continuous fluid space. All the spaces, except for the kitchen and bathrooms located on the North side, were connected and could be separated if needed by the use of the Modernfold accordion partitions. This allowed for free movement throughout the apartment while maintaining the individual function and privacy of each space. The result was a home that fostered moments of meeting and dialogue.
The uninterrupted open plan was reinforced by a continuous striped diagonal pattern used on the ceramic tiled floor (handmade by the artist Fausto Melotti) and plaster ceiling. The dominant colors of the interiors took inspiration from the warmth and brightness of sunlight. The white and yellow tiles together with the gold tones of surfaces and objects contributed to reflect light and create a joyous and vibrant atmosphere.

Finestra Attrezzata (‘Furnished Window’)
Ponti:
(IT) ‘...e le finestre arredate? Sono la mia passione.’
(EN) ‘…and the furnished windows? They are my passion.’
Large glass windows on the southern wall flooded the apartment with daylight and allowed the living room, studio and bedrooms to take full advantage of the view and orientation. Ponti conceived of a system of millwork and furniture elements such as shelving, display niches, drawers, and other components that could be integrated within the large window openings. The system was meant to display objects and artwork, creating a sort of interior, human scale landscape viewed against the expansive cityscape beyond. The ‘furnished windows’ were transparent walls representing the portal between the private interior space and the exterior public landscape.
Ponti:
(IT) ‘Un ambiente ha, per natura, quattro pareti. L’ambiente con una finestra totale in vetro ha invece tre pareti e un vuoto. L’ambiente con la finestra arredata ha di nuovo quattro pareti, di cui una trasparente. E su questa parete trasparente continua il disegno compositivo che e’ sulle altre pareti.’
(EN) ‘A room has by nature four walls. The room with a full glass window instead has three walls and a void. The room with the furnished window has four walls again but one of them is transparent. And, the composition that is already happening on the other walls can continue onto the transparent wall.’
(IT) ‘Ho ripensato alla casa di vetro di Philip Johnson, che e’ un ambiente solo, col perimetro tutto trasparente: essa crea lo stesso effeto che ho ricercato in queste finestre arredate, perche’ da dentro l’esterno lo si vede sempre attraverso i primi piani dei mobili, ed in questo consiste il suo incanto.’
(EN) ‘I thought about the glass house by Philip Johnson which is one single space with a perimeter made entirely of glass: it creates the same effect that I recreated with these furnished windows because from inside the exterior is always seen through the interior furniture in the foreground, this is its charm.’

Parete Attrezzata (‘Wall Organizer’)
The principle of the ‘Wall Organizer’ was a single wall panel that integrated several functional and decorative components. The units could be outfitted with a number of features such as lighting, shelving, radios, picture frames, thermometers, and many other accessories. The result was a unique piece of wall furniture blending with the overall architectural form. It would contribute to the definition of space and stand as a representation of the owner’s personality and taste.
From this concept Ponti developed his series of Testiere cruscotto (‘Wall dashboards’) that was designed for many different types of rooms and uses like headboards for the bedroom, shelving units for the living room, and workstations for the office. Variations of this system were also known as Mobili auto-illuminanti (“Self-illuminating furniture”) because they featured integrated, indirect lighting that would softly illuminate the wall as well as the objects displayed within.

Angular Dashboard (Private apartment Milan, 1958) - Photos by DimoreStudio

Bedside Dashboard (designed for Nordiska Kompaniet, Stockholm , 1953) - Photos by Phillips

Illuminated Wall Organizer (designed for Villa Planchart, Venezuela) - Photos from Ponti Archives

Illuminated Wall Organizer - Photos by Phillips

In his later years, Ponti began creating paintings on perspex that could be backlit when hung against a window like stained glass. His hope was to use these window paintings at each floor of the building as a decoration and a means for each resident to individualize their window as a form of organic architecture.

Ponti designed the building facade taking into account the differences between the diurnal and nocturnal appearance. This was heavily influenced by the high quantities of glass used on the facades of modernist buildings. It was necessary to consider the appearance in both conditions because during the day the facade would appear as a composition of solid, opaque surfaces, while at night the visual relationships would be inverted and become a porous display of individual luminous vignettes projecting outward into the city.

The apartment featured two typologies of decorative light fixtures:

The Luminous Panel Sconce consisted of linear brass channels mounted to a wall panel. The channels housed and shielded light sources that provided indirect lighting and highlighted the central display shelves.
The Luna Suspension Lamp was a pendant light with a luminous, satin white plastic body. This lamp was conceived for a prefabricated house that Ponti designed for the Milan Triennale Exhibition in 1957. It remained a protoype until 2017 when it was brought into production by the design manufacturer Tato.

Luminous Panel Sconce - Photo by Nilufar Gallery

Luminous Panel Sconce - Photo by Phillips

Text by Luciforma

Light at Home

Light at Home: Casa Ponti

Architect: Gio Ponti

Location: via Dezza, Milan, Italy

Year: 1957

Casa Ponti was an 8th floor apartment in a building located on via Dezza in Milan. The building itself was designed by Gio Ponti together with Antonio Fornaroli and Alberto Rosselli and was completed in 1957. The apartment was Ponti’s home for more than 20 years until his death.

The residence was a showcase for several of Ponti’s architectural principles and innovations, summarized here in three sections:

Open Plan

Finestra Attrezzata (‘Furnished Window’)

Ponti:

(IT) ‘...e le finestre arredate? Sono la mia passione.’

(EN) ‘…and the furnished windows? They are my passion.’

Ponti:

Parete Attrezzata (‘Wall Organizer’)

The apartment featured two typologies of decorative light fixtures:

The Luminous Panel Sconce consisted of linear brass channels mounted to a wall panel. The channels housed and shielded light sources that provided indirect lighting and highlighted the central display shelves.