domus 1940s

Founded in 1928 as a “living diary” by the great Milanese architect and designer Gio Ponti, domus has been hailed as the world’s most influential architecture and design journal. With style and rigor, it has reported on the major themes and stylistic movements in industrial, interior, product, and structural design.

This fresh reprint of domus’ coverage of the 1940s brings together the most important features from a decade of destruction and reconstruction. Even amid the bombing raids inflicted on Milan, domus continued to publish through much of the war, charting the design zeitgeist, while managing a successive turnover of editors and editors-in-chief during Ponti’s “interregnum” between 1941 and 1948. The pages from this period record reports and features on modern industrial design and furniture, new prefabricated houses, American academic architecture, the building projects of Carlo Mollino, Gian Luigi Banfi, Franco Albini, and Giuseppe Terragni, as well as the postwar flowering of Organic Design.

domus distilled

Seven volumes spanning 1928 to 1999

Over 4,000 pages featuring influential projects by the most important designers and architects

Original layouts and all covers, with captions providing navigation and context

Introductory essays by renowned architects and designers

Each edition comes with an appendix featuring texts translated into English, many of which were previously only available in Italian

A comprehensive index in each volume listing both designers’ and manufacturers’ names