Giò Ponti (1891-1979) was one of the great designers of the 20th century. His vision of modern life was a blend of elegantly stylized Neo-Classicism, a Mod interest in color and geometry, and a romantic fantasy of La Dolce Vita. Although all his work toyed with history and tradition, his output was hardly one-note. Ponti’s work could be organic or geometrical, spare or luxurious, functional or purely decorative. Above all, his work always strove to be beautiful, during a century when the definition of that word was often up for grabs. Here is a small sampling of his many designs in various media.

“Your house will be like a big butterfly poised on the hillside.” So wrote one of the most influential design visionaries of the 20th century, Gio Ponti, in a letter to art collector couple Anala and Armando Planchart. Villa Planchart is unmistakably modern, with spare, light forms and playful, bold colors. But at the same time, his work is heavily inflected by the past — specifically the Italian Neo-Classical tradition extending back at least as far as the Renaissance, if not all the way back to Ancient Rome.

The Parco dei Principi was the first hotel designed by Gio Ponti in 1960. In many respects, the design feels at once hypermodern (for 1960 perhaps) while maintaining cognisance of its real heritage - Ponti would write, “For life to be great and full, we have to combine the past with the future.” Perhaps the hotel's most distinctive features are the 30 custom tile patterns, which Ponti designed; they were executed by a local producer, Ceramica D'Agostino, in nearby Salerno.

The 1970 Taranto Cathedral is arguably his most complex and original plan. The design of the Concattedrale Gran Madre di Dio, as it became known, was inspired by its maritime surroundings. In place of a central crossing tower, Ponti came up with the idea of a ‘sail’. A kind of belfry without bells, the full width of the nave and 40m high, it is built from two concrete walls just a metre apart, perforated with vertical slits and hexagonal openings, including what Ponti called a ‘door to the sky, opening onto the immensity and the mystery of space and time’. For more info on his work, follow this link.