Gio Ponti’s Plan Drawing. Orientation Lines of the Housing Space

Abstract

Gio Ponti’s graphic ability led him to represent the domestic space on the floor plan with a particularly personal language. He was able to apply and transmit ideas that brought about the development of new ways of living, expressed in 1928 in the first Domus editorial ‘La Casa all’italiana’. These are expressive drawings, which show the union between architecture, environment and inhabitant, through the detail of furniture, flooring, natural elements and the human figure or signs of its location, as well as direction lines of the visuals and orientations of the spatial field. The graphic definition of pre-1940 Mediterranean holiday home projects, interpreted as a spatial field linked to nature, and the 1955 villa Planchart project in Caracas, configured with a sequential orientation of the space in relation to other adjacent spaces and to the exterior, are analysed. The articulation of rooms and enclosures, the crossing of gazes, and their escapes towards the landscape, give rise to the definition of complex and changing spaces, designed with sobriety and comfort. The floor plan is revealed as a matrix of relationships, views and orientations of the domestic space.