Giving Warmth to the Building— The World of Gio Ponti, Father of Modern Italian Design

Lixil Gallery Osaka

This event has ended.

Architecture once aspired to represent authority and dignity. Today, however, after the advent of modernism and new technologies of steel and glass, an architecture of lightness and transparency has become the norm. Yet this modernist architecture is often devoid of human warmth and lacked handmade or decorative elements.

Gio Ponti (1891-1979) is known as the “Father of Modern Italian Design.” Based in Milan, Ponti traversed disciplines working as an architect, designer, painter, and editor. This exhibition focuses on his endeavor to change heaviness to “lightness” and volume to “thinness”— a pursuit which led him to an interest in the building’s “skin.” Learn how Ponti integrated handicraft with machine production in four key elements: the interior wall, the window, the floor, and the exterior wall.