Gio Ponti: Ddesign Falls in Love with the Stage

Abstract

The essay inserts Gio Ponti’s work for the theatre in the ‘40s into the more extended role of the architect, qualified to do many things: paint, model, co-write for the theatre and the cinema, draw objects and productions. The archive of unpublished sketches for stage sets and costumes, director’s notes and correspondences highlight the one plot that binds scenography, architecture and design because everything a man does is in its expressive continuity always on the same plane. The scenographer’s work becomes not the relaxing diversion of a well-educated architect, but a significant piece in architectural theory and a method of controlling the design that places Ponti close to the architects of the Renaissance.