Built in 1936–38, the office building for the Italian chemical and mineral company Società Montecatini was completey designed by architect Gio Ponti and engineers Antonio Fornaroli and Eugenio Soncini. Ponti also developed a range of furniture for this project. An important node in the city plan of Milan, the Palazzo Montecatini became a manifesto of modern Italian architecture, presenting an unprecedented type of office building following a strictly industrial logic.
Ponti’s solutions for the building’s structure, technological systems, and furniture were developed in strict relation to their potential to be manufactured industrially. These choices are particularly evident in the furniture, with its standardized typologies, dimensions, and materials, built by the companies Parma Antonio e Figli in Saronno and Kardex Italiano in Milan.
The desk shown here was part of a workspace for four people, which was the basic modular element in the spatial organization. It was manufactured using specific moulds on which the sheet metal was cut and bent, and no further changes to the company’s usual manufacturing procedures were required. Each component of the furniture was designed to be made using a minimum number of pieces so that it was interchangeable among the different furniture typologies. Like all the tables and desks for the Montecatini, the desk shown here features a Securit glass top, recessed drawer handles, and a base of Anticorodal. The drawers are mounted on telescopic ball-bearing slides (Parma Antonio e Figlio) or on ball-bearing carriages (Kardex); whereas the lower part is designed not only to lighten the look of the object but also features a channel for the electric and telephone wires, thereby avoiding unsightly cables across the floor. This resulted in a utilitarian aesthetic, making the Montecatini furniture one of the first examples of the application of functionalist furniture design (and especially of its Italian counterpart, 'razionalismo') in a large-scale industrial complex.
Text: Fiorella Bulegato
