Riccardo Tisci may design clothes for the quintessentially Parisian couture house Givenchy, but his collections never stray far from his Italian roots. For Givenchy’s pre-fall collection, Tisci turned to his fellow countryman Gio Ponti, the famed architect, industrial designer, and founder of Domus magazine.  Tisci’s sleek silhouettes — straight pencil skirts worn over slacks, minimalist floor-length columns — recalled  some of Ponti’s most iconic buildings, such as the Pirelli Tower and Taranto Cathedral, both in Milan, while his modernist patchwork dresses and blouses paid homage to the architect’s playful furniture and product design.

From top: Ponti’s Taranto Cathedral, 1970 © G. Ponti archives/S. Licitra; two looks from the Givenchy’s pre-fall 2013 collection; a Gio Ponti rug (image via arkpad) flanked by two of Givenchy’s patchwork dresses; Givenchy’s sleek slate silhouettes recalled Ponti’s famous Pirelli Tower, 1958 (image via gioponti.com)

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Photo: Rifat Chadirji, via Artinfo

“Baghdad is at end of the world,” wrote Le Corbusier, “My responsibility as an architect is to be careful and not to be embark the client on adventures or misadventures.” But that’s exactly the fate that met the architect’s design for the Baghdad Gymnasium. A series of (mostly) misadventures would delay the realization of Le Corbusier’s sports complex nearly 25 years, from 1957 when the first plans were submitted to the Iraqi authorities to 1982 after Saddam Hussein had assumed power and completed the concrete structure as a monument to his rule. In that time, the original project underwent several iterations precipitated by the 1958 revolution and Le Corbusier’s death in 1965, among a series of other factors. Now, the building will enter into a new phase of life, as Iraq seeks aid from France to restore the obscure modernist work. Continue.

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By now we’ve all heard that the Pelli Clarke Pelli 1,200-foot tower at 15 Penn Plaza has been approved by New York City Council. After all the public protest from the owner of the Empire State Building, who fussed that the new skyscraper would interfere with sightlines to the Manhattan icon, the council barely discussed the skyline, instead voting 19-1 in favor of New York building to “remain great.” [via A/N Blog]

Backed by a letter from Sir Richard Rogers, Richard Meier’s house for actor Rowan Atkinson has been approved in the bucolic hamlet of Ipsden, United Kingdom, despite concern from area residents. In regards to the home’s Meier aesthetic, Atkinson said there was “nothing inappropriate about its stark white colour if the building was proportionally designed: ‘The home will add to our architectural heritage rather than parody it.’” [via Building Design Online]

Moving out of the studio and into the big bad world, five students from California’s Academy of Art built this prefabricated outdoor office in three months on a very limited budget and using only reclaimed materials. It turned out so well that the local AIA awarded the project an Exceptional Design Award for the Bay Area. Congrats! [via Inhabitat]

Get jazzed, design nerds. Iconic Italian designer Giò Ponti is the subject of a furniture retrospective at the Molteni&C Dada Unifor flagship store in SoHo — including a vintage documentary of Mr. Ponti’s 1956 Pirelli headquarters building in Milan. [via New York Times]

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