Gio Ponti: Architecture and Incoherence

Germano Celant states in "The Substantiality of the Impalpable: Gio Ponti," that Ponti's position "...did not consist in the illusion of an abstract linearity, but in the fluidity, directed as much at the modern as at the ancient, of a not knowing and a not recognizing, which he tied to daily experience..." This attaches a primary epistemological characterization to the core of Ponti's architectural thought and work which raises a number of interesting issues regarding the foundations of architectural culture. To argue that experience can only involve us in a reality of incoherence, and that thought's progression and expansion is based upon a synthesis of the otherwise uncertain, places the problems of human dwelling in a peculiar (non-obvious) situation. To take on those problems most fully (beyond the practical into the profound) is to accept the chaotic as the fundamental background of work. Ponti's own work, especially when considering the plan, stands outside or beyond the concept of coherence. While it is normal for much architectural work to "consist in the illusion of an abstract linearity," it cannot deliver on its promises of well maintained selfcoherence.

Ponti would argue against the monolithic in architecture as a mimesis, or at least a symbolism, of the absolute. In the arts, as in any other discipline, the realizability of absolute knowledge promises the safety of being able to justify artistic moves. No wonder it is the weapon of choice for embattled ideologies of all kinds. In architecture it reduces the profound operation of buildings to a simple representational function. It is not important what the nature of the underlying 'certainty' is, beyond that there is one and that it is being referenced by the work's being as it is. Ponti's position steps beyond the whole arena of ideology. He understands that idealism does not hold power over reality. Theory can be constructed and goals maintained, but in the realm of action (and design exists as action) it is imperative that contingency be accepted. The distance between the ideal and the real is not a problem to be overcome, but rather, a clearing in which fantasy and possibility reside. The open-ended nature of life (fantasy) prevails over stasis, where stasis is the realm of absolutes and extreme opposition...the realm of simplification wielded for its utility through the exercise of power and control.

To avoid the absolutes of architectural ideology requires the rejection of the very idea of an attainable certainty. According to Celant, Ponti accepts changes of style and insists upon an "emancipation from any rigid definition of tendency." Such a rigidity exists in the typical, the usual, the ordinary...its rejection is of the slavish demarcation of things. Intuitively, we might rightly ask what is to be gained from such a position. The answer lies in the retention of the 'pursuit of identity' as an always open question; the answer to which is governed by a kind of common sense version of the Heisenburg principle where extreme absolutes represent the containing limit. In concrete terms, design benefits from a never finalized questioning of its basic concepts. The architectural use of geometry, the notion of built order, and especially the concept of program must remain open to explorations of the richness they receive from the innumerable 'acts of human living.' After all, architecture is a 'place where things relate' at numerous levels within culture. It must present the fullness of human complexity through an unencumbered consideration of all its relationships and meanings. It is here that architecture becomes grounded. The ultimate end of Ponti's freedom and fantasy is the 'invigoration' of space and structure. This grounding-in-life includes the clear perception of limits and boundaries which allows us to separate fantasy from the merely arbitrary. This is as close to justification as art can come. The lived world is, after all, governed by fluidity, not absolute certainty. It consists in the multiple and fugitive nature of our experience...not only of sensation but of thought as well. The possible perception of this deeper truth is characterized by numerous words used in Celant's text: insubstantiality, contingency, ambiguity, mystery, incoherence, transition, vibration, palpitation, transformation, mutation, dynamism, and enigma.