Gio Ponti’s “Graceful Butterfly" — Villa Planchart
04.28.2023
“I want to dip my eyes into Gio Ponti imagery soup for the rest of my days,” I told someone dear to me after attempting to describe how meaningful this Italian designer’s oeuvre seemed. This phrase remains my only way of properly summarizing how I feel about Gio Ponti, and I think showing photographs of his Villa Planchart design will help illustrate my point. Quickly, you’ll be asking if your eyes can be an ingredient in his special soup too.
Giovanni “Gio” Ponti’s creative output spanned sixty years. Sixty years—almost 22,000 days of this man having ideas, colors, textures, patterns, words swirling in his mind. From these concept-defining stretches and bouts of creativity, he transformed himself into an architect, interior designer, magazine founder and editor, inventor, writer, decorative artist, poet, furniture maker, and educator. He sent an unfathomable amount of letters to others, often dashed with spurts of color. His mental and physical worlds were undeniably varied.