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| Gio Ponti and the Villa Planchart February 16 - March 19 Gund Hall Gallery January 21 - March 8 Busch-Reisinger Museum This exhibition highlights the work of Italian architect and designer Gio Ponti (1891-1979), best known in this country for the Pirelli Tower in Milan (1956), the Denver Art Museum (1970), and the Superleggera chair, designed in 1955 and still in widespread production today. Gio Ponti and the Villa Planchart focuses on one of Ponti's masterworks, the Villa Planchart, a private home built in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1956. Ponti designed not only the house but selected all the furnishings and decorative objectsÑmany of which were also designed by himÑas well as carefully planning and executing the relationship between architecture and landscape. Ponti believed that "architecture is made to be looked at." It is public landscape. "Facades are the wall of the street, and a city is made of streets; the facades are the visible part of the city, they are all of the city that appears." Gio Ponti's practice flourished at a time when, and in a country where, it was not unusual for one trained as an architect to work in a number of different spheres. During an extraordinary career that spanned more than fifty years and that was astonishing for its breadth, Ponti designed buildings and ship interiors, furniture, decorative objects, fabrics, stagesets, and exhibitions, taught architecture, wrote many books and articles, and founded and edited two magazines, Domus and Stile. His was a practice marked by the continuity of an individual expression that was shaped both by the times and by his own spirit. He made no distinction between art and craft, working comfortably in both, and promoted the manufacture of objects and furnishings using the latest techniques and materials of industrial production. Gio Ponti's work is characterized by grace and clarity. His work of the 1950s, his most productive period, embodies principles he pursued throughout his career in all areas of design: the development of finite form, simplified and reduced to its essential elements; lightness, transparency, and immaterialityÑboth architecture and objects were sharpened and stripped of their visual weight. Walls appear to be detached from one another as well as from roof and ground, often with the appearance of thin, perforated, hanging screens, while chairs can be lifted with one finger and decorative objects seem origami-like in their crispness and delicacy. This exhibition, the first in a series of collaborative efforts between the Harvard University Art Museums and the Graduate School of Design, is organized by Monica Ponce de Leon, assistant professor of architecture, Jorge Silvetti, professor and chair of the department of architecture, and Brooke Hodge, director of exhibitions, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and marks the institution by the Graduate School of Design of a new initiative in the design arts.
Brooke Hodge space Villa Planchart The "Quinta El Cerrito," better known as Villa Planchart, is an excellent case study of an twentieth-century building type: the single family home. Throughout history, while the best works of architecture have belonged most often to the public sphere, private domestic commissions have also been a significant venue for architectural production. It is in small elite residential buildings that architecture has the potential to be its most inventive, experimental, and, arguably, culturally relevant. Because of its small scale and generous budget, the single family home belongs to a category of projects where the client can be considered to have financed architectural research. Ironically, it is in domestic architecture where the relationship between the desires of the client and architectural innovation is often the most difficult. Unlike commissions for public works where client and program may be more elusive, in a private residence design is a result of the dynamic between architect and client. Alvar Aalto was given carte blanche by his clients in the design of Villa Mairea, whereas Mies van der Rohe pursued his ideal of the glass house in the Farnsworth House despite the objections of the client. Villa Planchart does not belong to either category. In Villa Planchart educated clients placed their trust in the architect while still retaining control over the project. The clients let Gio Ponti do his job while, in turn, Ponti served his clients well. The correspondence between Ponti and Armando and Anala Planchart allows us to trace the conversations that produced the building. In these letters we find disagreements followed by persuasions, where invention is understood as a form of compromise. This strong working relationship allowed Gio Ponti to design the interiors of Villa Planchart in a remarkable fashion. Ponti selected (and often designed) furnishings, decorative objects, and even articles of daily use. The modernist principle of integration of the arts with the architecture was naturally carried out in this building. Gio Ponti already had made a career of working with artists such as Melotti, Rui, and Fornasetti, while the Plancharts were art collectors, who had promoted contemporary Venezuelan artists through their non-profit foundation. Their relationship with Ponti brought major Italian artists to Caracas, and little known Venezuelan artists such as Reveron abroad. This project also offers insight into a modus operandi peculiar to the great architectural figures of this century: the long distance practice. While technological advances have made it increasingly easy for architects to work outside their immediate environs, we have become more aware of the ideological problems inherent in such practices. In the case of Villa Planchart, issues of national identity are particularly complex given VenezuelaÕs political and cultural climate in the 1950s. Under the dictatorship of Perez Jimenez, Venezuela's modernization, begun a decade earlier, came to fruition. At the same time, a strong nationalist tendency was brewing, which led to the overthrow of Perez Jimenez's government by the time Villa Planchart was completed. It is in this climate that the Caracas of today developed; ultimately, it is with modernity where Venezuela now finds its identity. Not surprisingly, Venezuela's strongest architectural heritage is to be found in the middle decades of this century, and Villa Planchart belongs to this family of buildings. Gio Ponti's intervention in Caracas has been construed by some as an "act of colonialism," bringing into question the Plancharts' decision to hire a foreign architect. Ponti's description of the Villa as "Florentine" only served to reinforce such interpretations. However, what may at first seem an act of colonization may also be seen as an act of appropriation. The great immigration campaign that Venezuela waged under Perez Jimenez attracted many of Europe's (especially Italy's and Spain's) best professionals and highly skilled labor, which contributed to Venezuela's economic boom of the 1960s and '70s. To criticize the Plancharts for their choice of Ponti would be simplistic. The combination of a client of substantial means together with world-class craftsmanship gave Caracas one of the most important single family homes of our times, and possibly Gio Ponti's best project. Villa Planchart has been preserved virtually intact since its completion, still inhabited by the original client Anala Planchart, who together with her late husband established a foundation to manage and maintain the building. Despite its excellent condition and its accessibility, very little information is actually available about the Villa. This exhibition brings together drawings, photographs, furniture, and lettersÑa collection, that in its breadth, is rare for buildings of this kind.
Monica Ponce de Leon
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