Riccardo Rinaldi

Versatile and tireless, over the course of a career spanning more than sixty years, Gio Ponti (1891–1979) redefined the spirit of Italian design, working across all fields of the applied arts: from residential architecture to interior design, from ceramics to glass, to furniture and beyond. His boundless creativity allowed him to explore and reinterpret the most diverse styles of the 20th century, from the Novecento movement to Rationalism, always in search of beauty in all its forms. As founder and editor of Domus magazine, he absorbed and disseminated international ideas and established the canons of the ‘Italian home’ – a space where all the arts meet and coexist in harmony – helping to export the ‘Made in Italy’ brand. Today, Ponti is celebrated not only for masterpieces such as the Pirelli skyscraper in Milan, Villa Planchard in Caracas and the Hotel Parco dei Principi in Sorrento – emblems of modernity – but also for iconic furniture that continues to be reissued and to inspire new generations of designers around the world.

Le Corbusier (1887–1956), born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, devoted his life to designing buildings that have become symbols of the Modern Movement. From the Villa Savoye in Poissy, through the utopian Cité radieuse in Marseille, to the design of the city of Chandigarh in India, his works have made him one of the most important figures in 20th-century architecture. A tireless theorist, when he could not realise his ideas, he expressed them through books, conferences and lectures around the world. The ‘five points of modern architecture’ and the idea of the house as a ‘machine for living’ have left an indelible mark on the discipline. A visionary and, at times, a provocateur, he owed many of his insights to the hours spent painting and drawing, leaving us a rich artistic output which, even today, awaits proper recognition.

A successful design duo of the 20th century, Ray and Charles Eames worked side by side from 1941, the year they married, until Charles’s death in 1978. Thanks to their perfect complementarity, they mastered a range of creative fields, from architecture to furniture design, from textile prints to photography, and from films to children’s toys. Experimenting with the infinite possibilities of materials and production techniques, they never lost sight of the sole true aim of their work: ‘To produce the best, for the greatest number of people possible, at the lowest price’. With the aim of reaching a mass audience, they also pursued their research in the field of communication through video projections and exhibition installations. Their lectures on design remain valuable testimonies to this day, and their mass-produced pieces form part of the world’s most important museum collections.

An enigmatic, adventurous and elusive figure, Eileen Gray (1878–1976) left an indelible mark on the history of modern decorative art. From the Irish countryside to London and then Paris, she made her mark as a painter, designer and architect, but also as a gallery owner – the latter role undertaken under the convenient pseudonym of Jean Désert. With her lacquered screens and steel-tube furniture, she transcended the boundaries of the arts and created works rich in poetry, proudly asserting her desire to return to placing human beings and their emotions at the centre of plastic and spatial exploration. Villa E-1027, which she built in 1926 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin for Jean Badovici, is considered one of the finest examples of 20th-century architecture.

As he razes Carthage to the ground, Scipio Aemilianus recalls the words of Heraclitus: ‘A heap of rubble thrown together at random is the most beautiful order in the world.’ Scipio is convinced that every warrior is the architect of a new universal harmony. Yet, according to Albert Speer and Victor Hugo, not all ruins are created equal, and creating them well is an art. The former shapes buildings destined to produce beautiful ruins; the latter, a ‘martial arts critic’, is so struck by the sight of a gutted tower that he makes it the template for the new Romantic aesthetic. Ruins provide models for art, but the reverse also occurs, if it is true that the Allied bombs drew inspiration from the Ruins of the Old Kreuzkirche, painted by Bernardo Bellotto in 1765, to determine the face Dresden would have on the morning of 15 February 1945.Not even a promise of destruction can interrupt the spectacle of war. Thus, in the midst of an air raid, the manager of a German cinema clears away the rubble preventing the screening of a Nazi propaganda film. A few kilometres away, Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau has returned to its original state of debris scattered across the city streets, from where the artist had gathered it years earlier to elevate it to a work of art.What Jean-Yves Jouannais presents to us in these pages is an exclusive circle of heroes obsessed with sieges – that is, obsessed with sieges – who, without renouncing their commitment to the war effort, have amended its laws, feeling more inclined towards art. From antiquity to the present day, they inhabit spectral spaces, strewn with debris that the author describes with hallucinatory realism, so much so that the reader will feel as though they are touching the incandescent matter of the ruins of Berlin, Ebla, Halberstadt, Luoyping, Hamburg, Dura Europos or Stalingrad.

A giant of design and architecture, the unparalleled creator of the Paimio sanatorium, the Savoy vase, and the designer par excellence of the curve, Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) is a national monument for Finland, the equivalent of Picasso for Spain and Joyce for Ireland.An architect of perception, emotion and inspiration, Aalto championed the spontaneity of energy flows and placed nature at the centre of his reflections. An introductory essay and an unpublished text by the architect himself retrace his human and professional stages: his first approach to drawing under his father's project table; his studies in Helsinki; his imagination influenced by national romanticism as well as by Finnish and Italian nature; his adhesion to functionalism and his final landing place in organic architecture. A path travelled together with his life and work companions, Aino and Elissa.

Architect, designer and photographer, Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007) left a profound mark on the international design scene with his unmistakable visual vocabulary, made up of unprecedented combinations of materials and unprejudiced research into colour.After his prolific association with Olivetti, he became an avant-garde icon in the 1980s with the Memphis Group, before devoting himself entirely to architecture. His indispensable freedom, in work as in life, is accompanied by an insatiable curiosity that leads him to explore places and cultures, instilling the same enthusiasm in all his collaborators. A rich introduction by Emmanuel Berard and a self-portrait written and drawn by Sottsass himself, together with photographs and projects, restore the fascinating and restless creative path of a great master of Italian design, still a reference point for new generations.