Ettore Sottsass (14 September 1917 – 31 December 2007) was an Italian architect and designer of the late 20th century. His body of designs included furniture, jewellery, glass, lighting and office machine design.
Early career
Typewriter
Valentine (1969)
Sottsass was born on 14 September 1917 in Innsbruck, Austria, and grew up in Milan, where his father was an architect.
He was educated at the Politecnico di Torino in Turin and graduated in 1939 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 home in 1947, he set up his own architectural and industrial design studio in Milan.
In 1959 Sottsass began working as a design consultant for Olivetti, designing office equipment, typewriters and furniture. Sottsass was hired by Adriano Olivetti, the founder, to work alongside his son, Roberto. There Sottsass made his name as a designer who, through colour, form and styling, managed to bring office equipment into the realm of popular culture.[1] Sottsass, Mario Tchou, and Roberto Olivetti won the prestigious 1959 Compasso d’Oro with the Elea 9003, the first Italian mainframe computer.
Throughout the 1960s, Sottsass traveled in the US and India and designed more products for Olivetti culminating in the bright red plastic portable Valentine typewriter in 1969, which became a fashion accessory.[1] Sotsass described the Valentine as "a brio among typewriters." Compared with the typical drab typewriters of the day, the Valentine was more of a design statement item than an office machine.
While continuing to design for Olivetti in the 1960s, Sottsass developed a range of objects which were expressions of his personal experiences traveling in the United States and India.[2] These objects included large alter-like ceramic sculptures and his "Superboxes"; radical sculptural gestures presented within a context of consumer product, as conceptual statement.[3] Covered in bold and colorful, simulated custom laminates, they were precursors to Memphis, a movement which came more than a decade later.[4] Around this time Sottsass has said,
I didn’t want to do any more consumerist products, because it was clear that the consumerist attitude was quite dangerous.[5][6]
The feeling that his creativity was being stifled by corporate work is documented in his 1973 essay "When I was a Very Small Boy",[7] and subsequently his work in the '70s was defined by experimental collaborations with younger designers such as Superstudio and Archizoom,[8] culminating in the foundation of Memphis at the turn of the decade.
Memphis Group
In 1981, Sottsass and an international group of young architects and designers, 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 squiggly laminate patterns.
The group's colourful, ironic pieces were considerably different 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." Memphis collection at: Memphis Design Collection
Sottsass Associati
Whilst the Memphis movement in the eighties attracted enormous attention around the world for its energy and flamboyance, Ettore Sottsass was simultaneously assembling a major design consultancy which he named Sottsass Associati. The studio was established in 1980 and gave the possibility to build architecture on a substantial scale as well as to design for large international industries.
Sottsass Associati, primarily an architectural practice, also designed elaborate stores and showrooms for Esprit, identities for Alessi, exhibitions, interiors, consumer electronics in Japan and furniture of all kinds.
The studio was based on the cultural guidance of Ettore Sottsass and the work was conducted by the talent and energy of its associates. Over the years the associates came and went often to open their own studios, these were young architects and designers which included: Johanna Grawunder, Marco Zanini, Matteo Thun, Aldo Cibic, Marco Susani, James Irvine, Mike Ryan, Gerry Taylor, Christoph Radl, Mario Milizia and Christopher Redfern.
List of the associates from the beginning to the present time: Daniel Aeschbacher, Anna Allegro, Flávia Alves de Souza, Michael Armani, Fabio Azzolina, Federica Barbiero, Veronica Bass, Michele Barro, Martine Bedin, Dante Bega, Elide Bega, Johnny Benson, Alberto Berengo Gardin, Cora Bishofberger, Pietro Bongiana, Manuela Boniforti, Guido Borelli, Ambrogio Borsani, Viviana Bottero, Edoardo Brambilla, Ulrike Broeking, Laurent Bourgois, Ruth Cabella, El Cannibal, Milco Carboni, Beppe Caturegli, Liana Cavallaro, Franco Cervi, Aldo Cibic, Annalisa Citterio, Pedro Cortacans, Elena Cutolo, Alberto Davila, José de Rivera Marinello, Elisabetta Della Torre, Monica Del Torchio, Giuseppe Del Greco, Claudio Dell'Olio, Paolo De Lucchi, Cristina Di Carlo, Simone Dreyfuss, Richard Eisermann, Ricardo Espinosa Ruiz, Bonni Evensen, Blanca Ferrer, Laura Feruglio, Peter Flint, Franca Foianini, Eugenia Folci, Maya Fong, Giovanella Formica, Barbara Forni, Riccardo Forti, Maria Paola Frau, Raffaella Galli, Massimo Giacon, Susanna Giancolombo, Paola Giovinelli, Annette Glatzel, Bruna Gnocchi, Theo Gonser, Nuala Goodman, Johanna Grawunder, Valentina Grego, Gertrud Gruber, Valentina Hermann, Shuji Hisada, Hugh Huddleson, James Irvine, Fumiko Itoh, Mercedes Jaén Ruiz, Nathalie Jean, Bessi Karavil, Mona Kim, Walter Kirpisenko, Christopher Kirwan, Francia Knapp Mooney, Ron Kopels, Takeaki Kaneko, Maki Kasano, Defne Koz, Paola Lambardi, Annette Lang, Larry Lasky, Oliver Layseca, Catharina Lorenz, Tina Leimbacher, Franco Luchini, Donato Maino, Marco Marabelli, Loredana Martinelli, Frédéric Mas, Cristina Massocchi, Luciana Mastropasqua, Cecilia Mazzone, Lorenzo Meccoli, Patrick Mellet, Costanza Melli, Sergio Menichelli, Monica Merlo, Mario Milizia, Yasukio Miwa, Alba Monti, Claudio Monti, Sebastiano Mosterts, Gianluigi Mutti, Kent Nalbandian, Davide Nardi, Nicola Nicolaidis, Jon Otis, Caterina Padova, Massimo Penati, Massimo Pertosa, Laura Persico, Susan Phelps, Adalberto Pironi, Roberto Pollastri, Marco Polloni, Timothy Power, Antonella Provasi, Christoph Radl, Elisabetta Redaelli, Christopher Redfern, Lucas Reimbold, Maria Marta Rey Rosa, Douglas Riccardi, Sara Ricciardi, Nicoletta Roia, Francisco Romero, Riccarda Ruberl, Mike Ryan, Giusi Salvadè, Maria Sanchez, Paolo Sancis, John Sandell, Mika Sato, Sabina Scornavacca, George Scott, David Shaw Nicholls, Eugenia Sicolo, Tony Smart, Massimo Schmid, Ettore Sottsass, Vittorio Spaggiari, Antonella Spiezio, Jenny Stein, Marco Susani, Ken Suzuki, Gerard Taylor, Giacomo Tedeschi, Flavia Thumshirn, Matteo Thun, Viviana Trapani, Jorge Vadillo, Susan Verba, Tiziano Vudafieri, Anna Wagner, Wendy Wheatley, Gail Wittwer, Bill Wurz, Yasuo Yamawaki, Carla Zanelli, Marco Zanini, Neven Zoricic.
Sottsass Associati are presently based in London and Milan and continue to sustain the work, philosophy and culture of the studio.
Other works
As an industrial designer, his clients included Fiorucci, Esprit, the Italian furniture company Poltronova, Knoll International, Serafino Zani and Alessi. 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. In the mid-1990s 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. A retrospective exhibition, Ettore Sottsass: Work in Progress, was held at the Design Museum in London in 2007. In 2009, the Marres Centre for Contemporary Culture in Maastricht presented a re-construction of a Sottsass' exhibition 'Miljö för a ny planet' (Landscape for a new planet), which took place in the National Museum in Stockholm in 1969.[3]
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
External links
| Persondata |
| Name |
Sottsass, Ettore |
| Alternative names |
|
| Short description |
|
| Date of birth |
1917-09-14 |
| Place of birth |
Innsbruck, Austria |
| Date of death |
2007-12-31 |
| Place of death |
Milan, Italy |
