Important Coffee Table from Via Dezza 49, designed 1954

One may often wonder, how does an architect and designer choose to design his or her own home? Gio Ponti, Italian architectural master, unsurprisingly furnished his home with many of his own designs. Ponti and his family moved into Via Dezza 49, in Milan, Italy, a nine-story apartment building, in 1957 and lived there for the remainder of his life. Ponti had previously been given carte blanche in other commissions, namely the Villa Arreaza and the Villa Planchart both in Caracas, Venezuela, and the Villa Namezee in Tehran, Iran. However, the Via Dezza represents Ponti’s creative choices when he sought to please only his own tastes. As it was a family home, Ponti envisioned the space as an open and inviting atmosphere suitable for everyday use. While other architects of the early twentieth century believed their commissions to be complete works of art, Ponti understood his designs were also to be lived spaces. Writing in Domus, Ponti explained that “Objects must be used not just for furnishing. They must belong to family history, derive from it” (Domus, no. 228, September 1948). Consequently, Via Dezza ultimately changed and evolved throughout the time the Ponti family lived there as the needs of the family changed.

Despite it being a family home, Ponti still furnished the apartment with many of his most iconic works and design practices, resulting in what can be described as a show house. Traveling through the apartment, visitors are greeted with alternating diagonal striped floors and ceilings, and glass room dividers, both favored by Ponti. Seen in some of his other commissions, Via Dezza also employs a dual color scheme of predominantly white and yellow. Ponti placed one of his coffee tables with a grid top in a seating area in the apartment. The present lot, and other related coffee tables with grid tops designed by Ponti, highlight the importance of the view point and reflect the ever present architectural nature of Ponti’s work. Circling the coffee table, the table morphs into different versions of itself as the grid changes colors every ninety degrees. Accordingly, this table is a perfect reflection of Ponti’s every evolving work that continuously offers a new perspective for its study, use, and enjoyment.