An exhibition celebrating the career of Gio Ponti is on show at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, featuring reconstructions of some the architect's best-known interiors.
As the first retrospective of the Italian architect and designer staged in France, Tutto Ponti: Gio Ponti Archi-Designer brings together more than 500 pieces from the archive of his work.
The entrance to the exhibition references Ponti's design for Taranto Cathedral, completed in 1970
It covers Ponti's six-decade career, from 1921 to 1978, and includes architectural and industrial designs, furniture and lighting, magazines, as well as his forays into glassware, ceramics and metalwork.
It begins with an evocation of the 1970 Taranto Cathedral's openwork front inspired by paper cut-outs, before unfolding in chronological order into displays of his objects, furniture and architecture. A desk with magazine rank designed by Ponti around 1958 is shown in walnut wood
The triple-height space of the main hall is divided into five sections featuring Ponti's commissions, furniture, lighting and textiles, and architectural projects. These are detailed through drawings and papier-mâché models, as well as photographs and film.
The exhibition design, by Wilmotte & Associe?s with signage by Italo Lupi, makes full use of the space. It includes tall white room dividers intersected with large-scale reproductions of Ponti's work and photographs of the man himself.
An image of the Lotus armchair for Cassina fro...