Architettura e Design

Throughout his career, the Genovese architect Alberto Ponis has combined the practice of architecture with that of painting, a tool and a stimulus for his activity as a designer of buildings. He has repeatedly drawn each of the sites for his projects, attentive to every detail in his designs with profound precision. This includes the nature of the places and the landscapes where they are located, the characters and needs of those who will inhabit them, and the specific conditions of their construction, always carried out with local builders and using local materials. This monographic edition of the magazine surveys the scope of his breathtaking practice and its context in meticulous detail. Alberto Ponis (Nervi, Genoa, 1933) grew up in contact with some of the most prominent Italian artists and designers of the early 20th century &mdashincluding Giò Ponti, Arturo Martini, Tomaso Buzzi, Paolo Buffa and Fortunato Depero, among others&mdash since his Father, Mario Alberto Ponis, collaborated with them through his company MITA (founded in Nervi, in 1926), specializing in the production of rugs, textiles and "artist's tapestries". Alberto Ponis enrolled at the School of Architecture in Florence in 1953. He graduated summa cum laude in 1960 and moved to the United Kingdom shortly after. From 1960 to 1964 he worked in London with Ernö Goldfinger and Denys Lasdun, where he came into contact with Brutalism, then a dominant presence on the British scene but was also introduced to the relationship between the concept of landscape and painting. In 1963 he arrived in Gallura, on the northern coast of Sardinia, an untouched place of extraordinary beauty, accompanying a group of British investors. He began his work in Palau &mdashthen a small port connecting with the island of La Maddalena&mdash where he has lived ever since. From the time of his arrival on the island, Ponis felt a deep fascination with the beauty of its nature, the presence of granite rock formations, the Mediterranean macchia landscape and the extraordinary morphology of the coastline. Sardinia was almost uninhabited then, with small rural settlements and stazzi scattered across the landscape.