Milan aircrash damages Ponti masterwork.
The most famous air disaster of the month occurred in Milan where a private
pilot flew into the Pirelli Building, the world-famous 32-storey tower designed
by the late Italian master architect Gio Ponti. Ironically, 3 May sees the opening
of a well-timed exhibition of his work at the Design Museum in London. The Pirelli
building, designed by Ponti with his famous compatriot Pier Luigi Nervi, became
in 1956 the leading and tallest reinforced concrete building in the world, and
remains supremely stylish, a modern masterpiece. In the age of the Lambretta
and the Olivetti Lettera 22 portable typewriter (beloved of all students and
first novelists of the l960s), Ponti presided over an easy Milanese predominance
in the world of design, whereby design was not only modern but expressed its
own mood of ‘l’aventura’.
In this elegant world soon peopled by Monica Vitti and Marcello Mastroianni,
Roman decadence of the Dolce Vita ambience was quickly put out of touch
by the seemingly effortless modernity of Ponti’s world. There was even
a house magazine, the now famous Domus, which still upholds the culture
of confident contemporaneity. The perfectionist furniture-maker Cassina, the
manufacturer of lighting Fontana Arte and even Ideal Standard, the sanitary
ware company, saw their sales benefit through Ponti’s patronage. In Denver,
Colorado, stands a little-known but well-loved museum of the region, designed
by Ponti, a compatible companion to the neighbouring architecture later introduced
by Daniel Libeskind. The Design Museum exhibition also includes the Superleggera
chair, the Pavoni coffee machine, and Ponti’s own designed scooter, the
Piaggio. Fortunately, the impact damage to the Pirelli Tower this month (now
housing local institutional headquarters) was slight. Fewer than 20 office occupiers
died, and the structure is repairable. The only mystery is how, in an uncluttered
skyline, a trained pilot, however disturbed or depressed, could fail to miss
the thin, faceted surface of this masterpiece. No architectural motivation,
nor any other for that matter, has been evidenced. In L’Aventura
there is a scene where an architect knocks an ink bottle over an architectural
drawing, by mistake on purpose. April’s drama was an undoubted accident.
