Pirellone lamp

When we think about Giò Ponti, the mind immediately goes to the Pirellone, the skyscraper symbol of Milan, one of the highest in the world in reinforced concrete (127.1 m).
There’s another Pirellone, the lamp created by the same genius and called with the same name.
 
It is difficult to define Giò Ponti only as an architect or as a designer. Perhaps just as his surname suggests (“Ponti” means “bridges” in Italian), he was particularly able to visualize the link between every form, conceiving the current concept of “domestic living“.
He was the first to design an entire house, from the spoon to the chair, from the table to the paintings hanging on the walls, and of course the lighting, which became the protagonist of the space.

(The Italian house is) “beautiful as a crystal, but pierced like a cave full of stalactites, it’s a living, versatile, silent house, which keeps adapting to the versatility of our life“.
– Giò Ponti
Along with furniture with wheels, functional and suitable for numerous uses, light plays a central role in the design of spaces, with the aim of making it larger, where possible.
 
It’s in 1960 that Giò Ponti saw the finish of his most famous project, the Pirellone, which aspired to give a new face to Milan. “Florence and Rome have hills, Naples has the sea, the islands and the Vesuvius (…) God has greatly helped the beauty of these cities, while for Milan God has done nothing, so it is up to us to make sure that Milan becomes a beautiful city ”.
7 years later the architect designed a floor lamp, and he called it “Pirellone“.

The Pirellone lamp has an essential yet imposing figure. The nickel-plated brass frame supports the tempered and curved glass, creating a simple, minimalist structure, in which Giò Ponti’s two main inspirations blend perfectly: neoclassicism and experimentation.
Its elegance as a Grecian column in the dark is matched only by its sobriety when it is switched off, during the day, when it dialogues with the other elements of the room.
 
For forty years in production and on sale for Fontana Arte, brand of which the architect was artistic director, the Pirellone lamp fits into the Presidential Suite of ETRA like an instrument within an orchestra. A part of a choral ensemble, yet a violin ready to play solo. In the bedroom it enhances a reproduction of a painting by Alfons Mucha, designing an intimate, romantic and fascinating atmosphere.