Ettore Sottsass

Architect + Product Designer (1917-2007)

Design Museum Collection

ETTORE SOTTSASS (1917-2007) was a grandee of late 20th century Italian design. Best known as the founder of the early
1980s Memphis collective, he also designed iconic electronic products for Olivetti, as well as beautiful glass and ceramics.

Wherever he went, Ettore Sottsass carried a camera to photograph anything that caught his eye. Doors, temples, kitchens, billboards:
nothing escaped him. This was a man who took 1,780 photographs on a twelve day trip to South America, who toyed with publishing a
book consisting of pictures of walls and for years photographed every hotel room in which he had slept with a woman.

Once in Marseille, Sottsass was snapping at a barber’s shop sign when he was forced to surrender his camera. It was a smuggler’s
nookie nest. In Egypt, he was photographing a rotting window when the police pounced. The window belonged to a police station. "Most
Ettore Sottsass with his 1981 Beverly cabinet for normal people (not just policemen) don’t like to face the reality that all things eventually decay," he wrote later. "I believe that the future
Memphis only begins when the past has been completely dismantled, its logic reduced to dust and nostalgia is all that remains."

Ettore Sottsass devoted his life and work to dismantling the past in his various roles as artist, architect, industrial designer, glass maker,
publisher, theoretician and ceramicist. The past to him was the rationalist doctrine of his father, Ettore Sottsass Sr., a prominent Italian
architect. Fond though he was of his parents, Ettore Jr. favoured a different approach. "When I was young, all we ever heard about was
functionalism, functionalism, functionalism," he once said. "It’s not enough. Design should also be sensual and exciting."

Born in Innsbruck in his mother’s native Austria in 1917, Ettore Jr. was marked out as an architect from an early age. His parents moved to
Turin in 1929 because it boasted the best architecture faculty in Italy and Ettore Sr. wanted his son to study there. Although he also loved
painting, Ettore Jr. acquiesced to his father’s wishes and gained an architecture degree in 1939.

No sooner had he graduated than he was called up into the Italian army only to spend most of World War II in a Yugoslavian
One of the many ceramic "totems" Sottsass has concentration camp. "There was nothing courageous or enjoyable about the ridiculous war I fought in," Sottsass wrote. "I learned nothing
made since the 1960s from it. It was a complete waste of time."
Design: Ettore Sottsass
After the war, he worked on housing projects with his father before moving to Milan in 1946 to curate a craft exhibition at the Triennale.
For the next decade, Sottsass continued to curate as well as pursuing his passion for painting, writing for Domus, the art and architectural
magazine, designing stage sets and founding a practice as an architect and industrial designer.

In 1956, Sottsass and his first wife, Fernanda Pivano, travelled to New York. "It really did look like (Fritz Lang's 1926 film) Metropolis:
everybody rushing around, noone caring a hoot," he recalled. "It was incredible, in fact, I changed inside out." He was commissioned to
create a line of ceramics during this visit, but was also inspired to concentrate on industrial design, rather than architecture, after spending
a month working in the studio of the US designer, George Nelson.

Back in Italy, Sottsass agreed to become a creative consultant to Polotronova, a furniture factory near Florence. In 1958 he accepted a
more demanding consultancy role for the newly created electronics division of Olivetti, the Italian industrial group. Sottsass was hired by
Adriano Olivetti, the founder, to work alongside his son, Roberto. Together with the engineer, Mario Tchou, they created a series of
Who’s afraid of Frank Lloyd Wright? gouache on
landmark products which were technically innovative and aesthetically appealing thanks to Sottsass’ love of pop art and Beat culture.
paper, 1977
They won the prestigious 1959 Compasso d’Oro with the Elea 9003, the first Italian calculator, and revolutionised typewriter design with
Design: Ettore Sottsass
Olivetti’s first electronic model, the Tekne, in an elegantly angular Sottsass case.

Throughout the 1960s, Sottsass travelled in the US and India while remaining a central figure in the Italian avant garde and designing
more landmark products for Olivetti culminating in the bright red, poppy plastic 1970 Valentine typewriter which he described as "a biro
among typewriters". Although Sottsass later dismissed the Valentine as "too obvious, a bit like a girl wearing a very short skirt and too
much make-up, it is still seen as an iconic ‘pop’ product. His furniture was equally influential: notably the mid-1960s "superbox" closets in
stripey plastic laminate developed for Polotronova. In 1972, Sottsass’ mobile, multi-functional fibreglass furniture unit was the toast of the
Italy: The New Domestic Landscape exhibition at MoMA, New York.

Table for Studio Alchymia, 1988-89
Design: Ettore Sottsass
By the late 1970s, Sottsass was working with Studio Alchymia, a group of avant garde furniture designers including Alessandro Mendini
and Andrea Branzi, on an exhibition at the 1978 Milan Furniture Fair. Two years later, Sottsass, then in his 60s, split with Mendini to form
a new collective, Memphis, with Branzi and other 20-something collaborators including Michele De Lucchi, George Sowden, Matteo Thun
and Nathalie du Pasquier.
Memphis embodied the themes with which Sottsass had been experimenting since his mid-1960s ‘superboxes’: bright colours, kitsch
suburban motifs and cheap materials like plastic laminates. But this time they captured the attention of the mass media as well as the
design cognoscenti, and Memphis (named after a Bob Dylan song) was billed as the future of design. For the young designers of the era,
it was an intellectual lightning rod which liberated them from the dry rationalism they had been taught at college and enabled them to
adopt a more fluid, conceptual approach to design. The Memphis collective’s work was exhibited all over the world, until Sottsass quit in
early 1985.

He then concentrated on Sottsass Associati, the architecture and design group where he worked with former Memphis members and
younger collaborators, including industrial designer James Irvine and architect Johanna Grawunder. Sottsass returned to architecture in
1985 when commissioned to design a chain of shops for Esprit.

Drawing of a bookshelf, 1979 He completed a series of private houses – including one in Palo Alto for industrial designer, David Kelley - and public buildings, notably
Design: Ettore Sottsass Malpensa 2000 airport near Milan. Sotsass Associati has also worked for Apple, NTT, Philips and Siemens, while Sottsass himself
continued with his artisanal projects in glass and ceramics. Revered in Italy as a doyen of late 20th century design, Ettore Sottsass is also
cited as a role model by young foreign designers, such as Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, for the breadth - as well as the quality - of his
work.

© Design Museum

Ettore Sottsass: Work in Progress at the Design Museum

Obituary of Ettore Sottsass by Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum in the Guardian January 2 2008

Biography
Carlton cabinet for Memphis, 1981
Design: Ettore Sottsass 1917 Born in Innsbruck, Austria to an Italian father, the architect Ettore Sottsass Sr., and an Austrian mother, Antonia Peintner.
Manufacturer: Memphis
1929 Family moves to Turin so Ettore Jr. can study architecture there.

1936 Travels to Paris on his own with very little money. Stays in a flophouse near Gare du Lyon and survives on two cans of preserved
fruit in three days.

1939 Graduates in architecture from Turin University only to be called up into the Italian army. Spends most of World War II in a
concentration camp.

1945 Returns home to work for his father. Moves to Milan in 1946 to curate a craft exhibition at the Triennale and starts contributing to
Domus magazine. Sets up his own architectural and industrial design practice.

Detail of Carlton for Memphis, 1981
Design: Ettore Sottsass
Manufacturer: Memphis
Architectural drawing
Design: Ettore Sottsass
Exhibits from the Ettore Sottsass exhibition at the
Boilerhouse, Victoria & Albert Museum, London
including (centre) the 1970 Valentine typewriter for
Olivetti
Text from the Ettore Sottsass exhibition at the
Boilerhouse, Victoria & Albert Museum, London
1956 Travels to New York to work in George Nelson’s studio for a month. Back in Italy, he is invited to design furniture for Polotronova,
near Florence.
1958 Appointed as design consultant to Olivetti’s new electronics division.
1959 Launch of Elea 9003 calculator. Works on Tekne electronic typewriter.
1961 Travels to India for three months, but is hospitalised in Milan with a mystery ailment. Roberto Olivetti sends him for treatment in the
US.
1965 Designs pop-influenced "totem" ceramics and the first "superbox" closets coated in stripey plastic laminate. Sottsass describes them
as "crazy things".
1967 Co-founds the Planeta Fresco literary magazine with Allen Ginsberg.
1970 Valentine typewriter wins the Compasso d’Oro. Sottsass art directs an ad campaign featuring the Valentine being held by people all
over the world.
1972 Participates in Italy: The New Domestic Landscape at MoMA, New York.
1973 Founds Global Tools design school with Archizoom and Superstudio.
1978 Collaborates with Alessandro Mendini and Andrea Branzi on Studio Alchymia’s exhibition of ‘new design’ furniture at Milan Furniture
Fair.
1980 Having left Alchymia, he forms a new design collective, Memphis.
1981 Over 2,000 people flood into the opening party for the first Memphis exhibition in Milan. Sottsass Associati is also founded that year.
1985 Announces that he has left Memphis. Returns to architecture at Sottsass Associati where he completes numerous industrial design
projects too.
2000 Sottsass Associati designs new Milan airport, Malpensa 2000.
2001 The Memphis revival begins with the opening of Memphis Remembered at the Design Museum.
2007 Ettore Sottsass: Work in Progress exhibits at the Design Museum
2007 Ettore Sottsass dies in Milan
© Design Museum
Bibliography
De Castro, Ettore Sottsass Scrapbook, Casabella, 1976
Barbara Radice, Ettore Sottsass, Thames & Hudson, 1993
Grillet, Ettore Sottsass, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1994
Andrea Branzi, The Work of Ettore Sottsass and Associates, Universe, 1999
Ettore Sottsass, Fornasetti – Designer of Dreams, Thames & Hudson, 1991
Ettore Sottsass, Ettore Sottsass Jr., Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, 1993
Ettore Sotsass, Sottsass Ceramics, Thames & Hudson, 1995
Ettore Sottsass, The Curious Mr Sottsass, Thames & Hudson, 1996
Ettore Sottsass, Sottsass, Toto, 1997
Ettore Sotsass, George Nelson, The MIT Press, 2000