“DIAMOND LINE" at 2018 Grand Basel Show

Famous architect and designer GIO (Giovanni) PONTI (1891-1979) has carried out his longtime automobile project, planned 65 years ago.

The car went on public display in Basel (Switzerland) from 6 to 9 September, which has attracted particular attention of the visitors in a context where the exposed cars can be defined as the true sense of the word “moving art”. According to Roberto Giolito, “The Diamond car project represents an important testimony of Ponti’s vision and ability to create innovative works with a strong personality.

Ponti perceives in car bodies the strong incongruity of bulges of unnecessary bulk, with absurd internal voids and traces with great ease the lines of a slender volume, made of clear dihedrals, decomposing the various parts as intersections of volumes into one another”. It’s important to remember Ponti as an architect of Milan’s Pirelli tower and as a designer of many furnishings for home, with high aesthetic value that are still in production nowadays. Among his inventions and creations of the twentieth century, it is notable a series of ceramics from Richard-Ginori production.

It was impossible for such an eclectic artist like Ponti not to create an elegant, practical and futuristic design of an automobile.