Explore Gio Ponti Arlecchino, the restored 1960 train hosting Prada Frames 2025, and see how its timeless design philosophy fuels today’s dialogue on mobility.
Gio Ponti Arlecchino rides again. The multicoloured electric train, designed in 1960, hosted Prada Frames 2025. Its revival bridges Ponti’s playful modernism with today’s debates on mobility and infrastructure.
Ponti led Italian modernism. He created towers, chairs, magazines and ideas that fused art with industry. From the Superleggera chair to the Pirelli Tower, he pursued lightness, elegance and human comfort.
Ponti called the Arlecchino “mobile interior architecture” rather than simple rolling stock. He and Giulio Minoletti sculpted an aerodynamic shell and jewel-tone coaches. Panoramic lounges with swivel seats turned scenery into cinema.
Four cars painted ruby, emerald, sapphire and gold
Wrap-around glass lounges at each end
Velvet reclining seats with winged backs
Bar car with a vintage Faema espresso machine
187 km/h top speed in 1960
By the 1990s only one Arlecchino remained. Fondazione FS Italiane spent ten years restoring the ETR.252 to service. They kept Ponti’s upholstery patterns, added discreet air-conditioning and rewired every circuit.
The result is not a museum piece but a working icon. Travellers savour time, craft and story at 160 km/h instead of chasing speed. This outlook defines the growing slow-luxury rail movement.
The symposium curated by Formafantasma chose conversation over objects. Speakers boarded the train in Milano Centrale to debate infrastructure, data and power flows. By staging talks inside Ponti’s masterpiece, Prada linked heritage to future systems.
The setting proved design is a living dialogue, not a static artefact. It showed how Ponti’s holistic thinking still guides urgent ecological and social questions.
Interdisciplinary spaces spark fresh insight
Heritage objects can host advanced discourse
Human-centred aesthetics clarify complex topics
The Arlecchino’s renewed journey affirms Ponti’s timeless credo. Design must uplift, serve and invite shared imagination. Sixty-five years later, his train still leaves the station carrying that message forward.
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