Denver: 1972

In the summer of 1972, Carol and George and Dorothy and I drove straight through from Cleveland to Denver to join the family for a retreat in the mountains outside Boulder. We arrived in Denver early on a bright day. The Gio Ponti building for the Denver Art Museum had just been completed in 1971. Its glass tile façade glistened bright gold in the sunshine. I was smitten. We came back home through Denver a few days later. The skies were gray and so was the building. I am not sure if I have ever seen such an animated façade. This archival photo from a recent article in Architectural Digest is by Wayne Thom. It reminds me of us approaching that golden building with an elliptical entry portal, long before the museum opened for the day.

The Ponti building has now been restored and expanded by the Anna and John J. Sie Welcome Center designed by Machado Silvetti. The welcome center unifies the Ponti building with the Hamilton Building, designed by Daniel Libeskind and opening in 2006.

The Ponti building, now called the Martin Building, is the only building by Gio Ponti in the United States. My appreciation of Ponti's architecture and design expanded significantly in 2018 when I was in Milan and Genoa. Lots of buildings, mostly in Milan. Design objects at the Wolfsoniana in Nervi (on the edge of Genoa) and this wonderful lampshade in the Triennale Design Museum in Monza (just north of Milan):

This memory was enhanced by reading "Opposites Attract" by Ian Volner in the October/November 2021 issue of The Architect's Newspaper.