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The 23 linear metre wall is made up of 200 coloured aluminium elements, ranging from powder coatings in tone-on-tone shades to oxidised finishes with different textures, such as polished, brushed, and velvety.

FOCUS ON TECHNOLOGY

Ponzio Milano. The Design Space in the Heart of the Metropolis where Aluminium Meets Colour

Alessia Venturi ipcm®

The opening of Ponzio Alluminio’s new concept store in the centre of Milan, a space devoted to relations with architects and clients and to the incubation of ideas and projects, was an opportunity for a double interview with Emilio Ponzio, the managing director and commercial director of this Italian company, and Guido Pozzoli, the owner of Stardust Powder Coatings. Both involved in the dissemination of the NCS colour standard in the fields of metal architecture and powder coatings respectively, the two firms work closely together to provide designers, architects, and specifiers with state-of-the-art colour solutions.

Last September Ponzio Alluminio opened its first exhibition space in Milan, at Via Giuseppe Barellai 6. This new, iconic Ponzio space in the heart of the Italian metropolis is not just a showcase or an exhibition, but a place centred on relationships, where people can meet and build great projects, and where the company’s expertise meets the desire of architects, designers, and customers to express themselves. The payoff of this new Milanese concept store, a 300 m2-wide space that also acts as an incubator for ideas and projects and as a trait-d’union between design and industrial production, is “We Dream in Colour”. Indeed, this location is faithfully in line with the DNA of Ponzio Alluminio, a long-established company in the architectural profile industry – it was founded right in Milan as an anodizing workshop in 1941 and moved to the Abruzzo region, in Pineto, only in 1966 – which is now able to paint and sublimate any type of aluminium profile in-house, offering an infinite range of finishes and excellent customisation capacity. With its Milanese concept store, Ponzio Alluminio has therefore returned to its origins. Its design was entrusted to Enzo Eusebi & Partners, which worked closely with this company. “The first collaborations between the architecture world and brands, such as that started by Rem Koolhaas and Prada for example, date back to the 1990s and they have made showrooms a very important aspect of marketing strategies,” says Eusebi himself in a video displayed in the concept store. “Ponzio has provided us with a space to translate its industrial supremacy in terms of colour and technology into tangible forms. After all, architecture has always been a fundamental part of the history of Ponzio, which even participated in the construction of the Pirelli Tower in the 1950s, proving its industrial excellence in the oxidation field.” Colour is ingrained in Ponzio’s DNA – and Eusebi translated this special relationship into an installation characterised by infinite shades, a sort of metaphorical border that can be crossed, giving life to the payoff “We Dream in Colour”. This abstract geometric structure, a 3D work obtained through the combination of 200 coloured aluminium elements, overlooks the entire concept store. “On the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of Ponzio, one of the very few Italian brands that has placed the building envelope and its various forms at the centre of its work, I decided to focus on a historical-technological transition that took place in the international architecture sector as early as the 1950s,” states Eusebi. “For us contemporary architects, using glass in an architectural envelope is a new way of designing a world in which humans observe the landscape, be it natural or man-made. Glass assembled with metal forms a veil, rather than a separation element: it divides but, at the same time, it unites. Moreover, in terms of sustainability, it is eternal, as it is completely recyclable at the end of its service life.” “Specialising in aluminium systems for architecture, Ponzio continues to

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The new Ponzio Concept Store located at Via Giuseppe Barellai 6, in the heart of Milan.

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A giant screen welcomes visitors with images of the most important solutions created by Ponzio.

evolve into different projects of innovation under the banner of Italian style. It is an idea, a dream that comes to life through colour,” says Emilio Ponzio, who now runs the family business. “Enzo Eusebi is an architect from the Marche region who has worked both in Italy and abroad. He has designed many projects using Ponzio aluminium systems so, when we thought of a space in Milan, it was natural to entrust the concept to his firm. In an independent way and without being influenced by our own ideas, Eusebi did a market analysis and concluded that the real difference between Ponzio and its competitors is the fact that colour is ingrained in our DNA. This gave rise to the idea of characterising the new space with a 3D installation featuring infinite nuances,” indicates Emilio Ponzio while taking me to discover the concept space. Architect Eusebi has translated these values in a tangible form with a 23 linear metres of 23 coloured aluminium elements, ranging from powder coatings in tone-on-tone shades to oxidised finishes with different textures, such as polished, brushed, and velvety. The result is a true work of art, which will be replicated in the other Ponzio locations, starting with the Pineto headquarters.

“My great-grandfather was the first to use the anodic oxidation technology in Italy. Indeed, our company’s industrial history began in a peculiar way: not with the study and design of profiles, but with their finishing. Today, we are the only company in Italy to bring together under one roof all the finishes currently available for aluminium profiles. Our concept store in Milan is aimed at reaching a somewhat broader target audience, made of designers, architects, opinion leaders, and all those who choose colours and finishes for projects but are often unaware of the variety of options available to them. Our focus on colour and finishing also led us to implement the NCS standard in our colour range in 2021, with the collaboration of Stardust Powder Coating. This choice will entail a big effort in terms of production flexibility, but it will bring us closer to younger, more innovative designers.”

The NCS colour standard as a competitive advantage

“In line with our DNA, we have decided to integrate our catalogue with a range of NCS finishes alongside our sublimated, coated, and anodised ones. The aim was increasingly standing out from our competitors and bringing something new to the market. In addition, NCS is a language closer to the design world. Our Area Ponzio sales network will have a dedicated NCS colour swatch book at its disposal,” explains Emilio Ponzio. NCS – Natural Colour System®© is a logical colour ordering system based on the way colours are perceived and it is internationally recognised as the universal colour language. With NCS, any surface colour can be

described and identified with a special code (NCS Notation). Conceived and developed by NCS Colour AB (Stockholm, Sweden), this system is based on more than seventy years of colour research and it is now the most widely used and practically oriented colour system worldwide for material manufacturers, architects, and designers. It is also highly versatile because it is unconnected with the material where the tints are to be applied. That is why the NCS standard is becoming increasingly popular in the industry, particularly in the aluminium and metal architecture sectors, also thanks to both companies such as Ponzio and industrial paint manufacturers such as Stardust Powder Coatings, which has chosen NCS to expand its colour range last year, adding 1950 new shades to its existing colour catalogue with Pantone and RAL tints. During ipcm®’s visit to the Ponzio Milano

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From left to right: Giuseppe Francavilla, Emilio Ponzio, and Guido Pozzoli from Stardust.

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