Gio Ponti, Pair of wall lights, from the Time & Life Building, New York, circa 1959. Design New York.
The recent discovery, and first-time appearance onto the market, of this pair of illuminated wall lights, sheds “new light” on one of Ponti's most important but lesser-known architecture and design commissions: the 1959 auditorium building on top of the 8-story wraparound annex to the 48-story Time & Life tower. This pair, in a very ample gauge of brass, is nearly four feet high. They likely came from the dining room and are at this time the only remaining examples from a set of six that Ponti positioned throughout a complex of six interpenetrating rooms. Besides the dining room, there was a reception lounge, an auditorium, a kitchen, a bar, and a conference room. Suspended from the wall surfaces, by barely a half inch, their masked lighting lends a note of mystery to a historic emblematic form: the Egyptian obelisk. “The obelisk teaches architecture. It is perhaps the very symbol, the pure symbol of architectural expression from which a song arises, the lines of which do not pose, do not sleep, do not merely stand but are static in motion - the ecstasy of a movement.”
The dining room of Gio Ponti’s auditorium at the Time & Life Building, New York, circa 1959.
The context of this commission is also critical to a greater understanding of how and why Ponti concentrated so many ideas into his first American architectural work. The main skyscraper building was designed by Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz in 1956 and completed in 1959. It was the headquarters of Time & Life, publishers of numerous magazines but best known for each of the company’s namesakes not just in the United States but around the world. The company owner was Henry Luce, whose wife, Clare Booth Luce, a writer and politician was appointed as U.S. ambassador to Italy in 1953, which eventually led them to become acquainted with both Ponti and his wife Giulia Virmacati Ponti.
According to Ponti's daughter Lisa Licitra Ponti: “the Luces, both Clare and Henry, were close to my parents, who were often invited to their dinners and receptions in Rome and Milan.” In its September 9, 1957 edition, Time published the article “Art: The Pleasure of Ponti” which extolled his “effervescent genius.” Soon after, Ponti received this commission from Luce, his first American-built work that preceded two other important projects: the Manhattan Alitalia showroom of 1958 and the Denver Art museum of 1965.
For the auditorium pavilion Ponti chose the diamond shape as a catalyst to symbolize his particular humanist vision. This allowed him to explore the most diverse typologies, and interconnections within the vast realm of his creative practice, encompassing art, architecture and above all design. This prestigious project was generously funded, which provided Ponti with an opportunity to demonstrate the specific elegance of Italian design and architecture with his very own orchestration of crystalline geometries. The project proved to be a calling card for Italian culture in New York and beyond, extending Ponti's worldwide reach in the 1950s to Caracas, Stockholm, Baghdad and later, in the 1960s further to Tehran, Islamabad, and Hong Kong, with projects that all incorporated regional variations on his diamond matrix.
The exterior of the pavilion designed by Gio Ponti for the Time & Life Building, New York, circa 1959.
While he had previously used the obelisk motif in the wall lights for the 1950 Vembri-Burrows offices in Turin and Genoa, they were embedded in an illuminated niche-like brass frame. A 1953 drawing for the New York showroom of Altamira shows a concept for a solitary wall light, but it was never made. For the Time & Life pavilion, Ponti isolates this compelling form, and enhances its salient shaft with six protruding diamonds, analogous to Italian Renaissance rustication, as seen over the 1493 Palazzo dei Diamanti di Verona. By repeating the diamond form on the wall lights, this image is forever looped in an optical density reflected throughout the inner and outer geometries of the pavilion.
Lobby of Gio Ponti’s auditorium at the Time & Life Building, New York, circa 1959.
In a review published in a 1960 issue of Architecture Forum, the Harrison and Abramovitz tower is described in a perfunctory manner, noting the 32-foot-high lower lobby in luxurious materials framing the commissioned artwork by Josef Albers and Fritz Glarner. However, there is no mention of the now famous “Time & Life” swivel office chairs, designed by Charles and Ray Eames. Still, the author goes on to describe Ponti's pavilion interior enthusiastically as “voluptuous” in an almost “Baroque” manner. The furniture (chairs, consoles, and tables) is commented upon as “neo-Art Nouveau,” having “as many joints as a praying mantis.” Ponti's Giallo Fantastico flooring for Pirelli is praised as “a grand lava flow of sheet rubber in yellow, marbled with streaks of green, and dark blue, all set on a bias.” Considering its purpose for advertising conferences and meetings, the writer compliments the boldness of design in glowing terms by observing that “only the design-wily Italian could dare the critics — but he knew his Madison Avenue audience.”
The obelisk teaches architecture. It is perhaps the very symbol, the pure symbol of architectural expression from which a song arises, the lines of which do not pose, do not sleep, do not merely stand but are static in motion — the ecstasy of a movement.
—Gio Ponti: Amate l'architettura
Since they were exclusively used for this program, the Ponti obelisk wall lights are distinct from all the other lighting used throughout the angled, interconnecting rooms. All were made by Arredoluce, the prestigious lighting company of Angelo Lelii. The other fixtures for the ceilings and walls were derived from earlier Ponti designs and consisted of hexagonal, circular, and rectangular elements, which soon after were put into production and retailed at their shops throughout Italy. In contrast, the obelisk wall light fitted well into Ponti's concept of an architectural icon that is both metaphysical and analogous to a “universal” symbolic marker. It is unsurprising that he chose such an emblem for a publishing firm whose reach was worldwide, and yet harnessed his own agenda of “architecture as crystal” into the mix.
Lighting designs by Gio Ponti for the Altamira showroom, which were never realized, circa 1953. Image credit: Gio Ponti Archives / Salvatore Licitra.
In 1983 the Ponti pavilion interior was dismantled and redesigned in a nondescript late modernist idiom. The journal Oculus of the New York chapter of the A.I.A. published a comment acclaiming the project as a reconstruction of the original Art Deco design. This kind of misreading is symptomatic of a then-somewhat casual approach to architectural journalism. Forty years on, in light of countless rigorous academic evaluations we are in a better position to fully appreciate the radiating power of Ponti’s illumination scheme for the Time & Life pavilion and his obelisk wall lights, freshly rescued from obscurity, can now glow again for years to come.
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