Ettore Sottsass

(b Innsbruck, 1917). Austrian architect and designer, active in Italy. He was the son of the architect Ettore Sottsass sr. Sottsass jr moved to Turin with his family at the age of 11 and qualified in architecture at the Politecnico, Turin, in 1939. Convinced of the role of colour as creator of space and as a means of breaking with the monochromatic preferences of the Rationalists, he developed a close relationship with avant-garde artists, organizing the first international exhibition of abstract art in Milan. His design for the Grassotti publicity stand (1948), an abstract composition of organic curves in laminated plywood, pays tribute to such Surrealist sculptors as Alexander Calder. In the early 1950s he concentrated on architecture. In the block of workers' dwellings (1951), Romentino, Novara, he explored the relationship between architecture, terrain and climate, emphasizing the social function of spatial organization in encouraging community interaction. References to vernacular building types and the inclusion of traditional communal spaces, such as staircases and balconies, are also evident in later housing schemes at Arborea (1952), in Sardinia, and Meina (1954), into which textured surfaces, colours and decorative elements are integrated.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Although Sottsass worked for major manufacturers such as the office equipment company Olivetti, the domestic equipment company Alessi, the furniture companies Knoll and Artemide, and the glass company Venini, he was at the forefront of avant-garde design practice in Italy for most of the second half of the 20th century. His rejection of Modernism in the 1950s was followed by involvement with the Anti-Design movement of the 1960s and 1970s, with Studio Alchimia from the late 1970s, and Memphis during the 1980s. He also formed Sottsass Associates in 1980, thus consolidating his role as an important fulcrum for design discourse throughout the whole period. Sottsass's work has been exhibited at major venues around the world for three decades and features prominently in the contemporary design collections of all major museums.

From origins in Innsbruck the family moved to Turin in 1928. Growing up with an architect as father Sottsass became interested in the creative arts from an early age. After travelling to Paris in 1936 he went on to study architecture at Turin Polytechnic, graduating in 1939. In 1947 he established an architectural and design office in Milan and worked alongside other key figures in post-war Italian design, Marco Zanuso and Vico Magistretti, on interiors and furniture for municipal housing. Over succeeding years he became increasingly involved with design debates, particularly through the Milan Triennali. From 1955 he moved into product design, a position furthered by a visit to the United States in the following year. His experience was deepened by working in the design studio of George Nelson in New York, a location that afforded him the opportunity to experience a highly developed consumer society in which mass culture played a prominent role. He also saw the power of scale and colour of the American Abstract Expressionist artists (and, on a later visit in the early 1960s, the work of American Pop artists). In 1957, back in Italy, he began working for Olivetti as a consultant designer working on a range of products including the large-scale Elea 9000 computer (1959), the Praxis 48 typewriter (1963), and the brightly coloured Valentine portable typewriter (1969). This period marked an interest in design for the workplace that resulted in a number of innovative design solutions such as the Synthesis 45 office furniture. However, during this period, Sottsass also travelled to India in 1961 and experienced a spiritual dimension to life, far removed from the materialism that he had experienced in the USA and Europe. This resulted in a series of ceramic projects—including the series Ceramics of Darkness (1963) and Ceramics to Shiva (1964)—that added to the wealth of cultural meaning and symbolism that was to characterize much of his work. From the mid-1960s he worked for Poltronova, designing experimental furniture that drew on many references to popular culture such as Disney's Mickey Mouse. During the 1960s his outlook was firmly opposed to notions of ‘Good Design’ and made him a leading figure in the Anti-Design movement. In 1972 he participated in the Italy: The New Domestic Landscape exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, curated by Emilio Ambasz, showing designs for a flexible living space comprising a series of movable modules. In 1973 he was a co-founder of Global Tools, an experimental laboratory for architecture and design that sowed the seeds for Studio Alchimia, itself a highly influential avant-garde design group committed to research and discourse, with which Sottsass was associated from 1979. However, Sottsass was more committed to developing new relationships with industry than Alchimia's implicit commitment to polemic through exhibition, manifesto, and limited editions and became a founder of the Memphis group in Milan in 1981. They believed that any possibilities to realize the propositions of the Radical Design counterculture had disappeared with the economic crises of the later 1970s. Sottsass's work for Memphis ran completely counter to conventional notions of ‘form follows function’ and explored new possibilities of colour, decoration, meaning, and metaphor in furniture and product design that did not conform to tradition or precedent. These vibrant prototypes proved highly influential in international design circles and represented what has been termed ‘Nuovo Design’ (New Design) and, more generally, Postmodernism. Typifying this phase of his work was the free-standing Carlton sideboard.

In 1980 Sottsass Associates was formed with Matteo Thun, Marco Zanini, and Aldo Cibic, for which Sottsass worked on both architectural and design projects. These included work for large industrial companies such as Brionvega (television sets) and Mandelli (machine tools), interior designs for Esprit retail outlets, the Alessi shop in Milan and the Zibibbo bar in Fukuoka, Japan (1989), and architectural commissions such as the Wolf House (1987-9) in the United States and the Contemporary Furniture Museum in Ravenna (1992-4). Other designers working at Sottsass Associates have included Johanna Grawunder, Mike Ryan, Marco Susani, James Irvine, and Christopher Redfern.

This article needs reorganization to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. There is good information here, but it is poorly organized; editors are encouraged to be bold and make changes to the overall structure to improve this article. (January 2009)

Ettore Sottsass
Personal information
Name	Ettore Sottsass
Nationality	Italian
Birth date	September 14, 1917(1917-09-14)
Birth place	Innsbruck, Austria
Date of death	December 31, 2007 (aged 90)
Place of death	Milan, Italy
Work
Significant buildings	Mayer-Schwarz Gallery Beverly Hills, California
Significant design	Olivetti Valentine typewriter Nine-0 Chair

Ettore Sottsass (14 September 1917 – 31 December 2007) was an Innsbruck-born Italian architect and designer of the late 20th century. Sottsass was a flamboyant, influential, highly original and occasionally despised Italian designer and architect who was a leading member of the group which established postwar Italy's reputation for design. Sottsass made his name in the 1960s as an industrial designer for Olivetti (particularly the iconic red Valentine portable typewriter). ^{[1] [2]}

Contents 1 Career 2 Bibliography 3 References 4 External links

Career

Typewriter Valentine (1969)

Sottsass was born September 14, 1917, in Innsbruck, Austria, and grew up in Milan, where his father was an architect. In 1939 he graduated from Politecnico di Torino in Turin with a degree in architecture. He served in the Italian military and spent much of World War II in a concentration camp in Yugoslavia. After returning from the war, he set up his own architectural and industrial design studio in Milan in 1947, one of a new group of Italian designers which included Gio Ponti and Carlo Mollino dedicated to postwar reconstruction.

Interested in south Asia, Sottsass traveled to India only to return to Italy a very sick man. Luckily, Sottsass had been befriended by Adriano Olivetti, son of Camillo Olivetti, a leading northern Italian industrial magnate. When Sottsass returned to his homeland, Olivetti was so concerned about the health of his friend that he gave Sottsass a blank check to seek a cure in the United States. While spending a year in and out of California hospitals, Sottsass managed to make friends with Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, as well as other leaders of the Beat Generation. Rejuvenated in health and spirit, Sottsass returned to Milan where he began working as a consultant designing the Olivetti's electronic equipment, typewriters and office furniture in 1959, despite his lack of technical knowledge. He designed a pop-influenced “totem”, and the ELEA 9003 calculator over his 40 years working with Olivetti. His redesign of the ELEA 9003, Olivetti's mainframe computer, won him Italy's highest design award in 1959. Sottsass added blocks of color to distinguish the various components of the computer from one another and lowered the height of the machine so workers could see one another over the top.

In 1969 he, along with Perry King, designed the bright red portable Olivetti Valentine typewriter with a lightweight plastic case. It became the ultimate fashion accessory for the “girl-about-town” of that era. Compared with the typical drab typewriters of the day, the 1969 Valentine was more pop art than industrial machine.^[1][2]

In 1981, Sottsass and an international group of young architects and designers, all in their 30s except for Sottsass who was 64, came together to form the Memphis Group. A night of drinking and listening to Bob Dylan’s ‘’Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again’’ gave the group its name. Memphis was launched with a collection of 40 pieces of furniture, ceramics, lighting, glass and textiles which featured fluorescent colors, slick surfaces, intentionally lop-sided shapes and squiggley laminate patterns.^[1][2] Some critics of Memphis claimed that only affluent Dallas psychiatrists would ever buy such designs. ^[1]

The groups colorful, ironic pieces departed considerably from his earlier, more strictly modernist work, and that was hailed as one of the most characteristic examples of Post-modernism in design and the arts. Sottsass described Memphis in a 1986 Chicago Tribune article: "Memphis is like a very strong drug. You cannot take too much. I don't think anyone should put only Memphis around: It's like eating only cake."^[2]

As an industrial designer, his clients included Fiorucci, Esprit, the Italian furniture company Poltronova, Knoll International, and Alessi.^[1] As an architect, he designed the Mayer-Schwarz Gallery on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California, with its dramatic doorway made of irregular folds and jagged angles, and the home of David M. Kelley, designer of Apple's first computer mouse, in Woodside, California. ^[2] In the mid 1990's he designed the sculpture garden and entry gates of the W. Keith and Janet Kellogg Gallery at the campus of Cal Poly Pomona. He collaborated with well known figures in the architecture and design field, including Aldo Cibic, James Irvine, Matteo Thun.

Sottsass had a vast body of work; furniture, jewellery, ceramics, glass, silver work, lighting, office machine design and buildings which inspired generations of architects and designers. In 2006 the Los Angeles County Museum of Art held the first major museum survey exhibition of his work in the United States.^[2] A retrospective exhibition, Ettore Sottsass: Work in Progress, was held at the Design Museum in London in 2007.^[1]

Bibliography

• Hans Höger, Ettore Sottsass jr. - Designer, Artist, Architect, Wasmuth, Tübingen/Berlin 1993
• Barbara Radice, Ettore Sottsass, Electa, Milano, 1993
• F. Ferrari, Ettore Sottsass: tutta la ceramica, Allemandi, Torino, 1996
• M. Carboni (edited by), Ettore Sottsass e Associati, Rizzoli, Milano, 1999
• M. Carboni (edited by), Ettore Sottsass. Esercizi di Viaggio, Aragno, Torino, 2001
• M. Carboni e B. Radice (edited by), Ettore Sottsass. Scritti, Neri Pozza Editore, Milano 2002
• M. Carboni e B. Radice (edited by), Metafore, Skirà Editore, Milano 2002
• M. Carboni (edited by), Sottsass: fotografie, Electa, Napoli 2004
• M. Carboni (edited by), "Sottsass 700 disegni", Skirà Editore, Milano, 2005
• M. Carboni (edited by), "Sottsass '60/'70", Editions HYX, Orléans, 2006

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f} "Ettore Sottsass: Designer who helped to make office equipment fashionable and challenged the standard notion of tasteful interiors", The Times: D8, January 2, 2008, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3118052.ece 
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Stewart, Jocelyn Y. (January 5, 2008), "Ettore Sottsass Jr., 90; Italian designer put passion, delight in utilitarian objects", Los Angeles Times: B9, http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-sottsass5jan05,1,1340930.story?coll=la-news-obituaries&ctrack=1&cset=true 

External links

• A conversation with designer Ettore Sottsass, television interview with Charlie Rose, 29 November 2004, video.
• Ettore Sottsass. Existential Design, published by Hans Höger in domusWeb, Milan 2005.
• Emeco Nine-0 by Ettore Sottsass
• The Life and Times of Ettore Sottsass
• Jennifer Kabat on Ettore Sottsass
• Ernest Mourmans' House in Belgium by Ettore Sottsass
• Hans Höger on Ettore Sottsass: Existential Design, DomusWeb, April 2005.
• Olivetti official site
• Obituary in The Times, 2 January 2008

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)