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Ettore Sottsass

Italian designer (1917 - 2007)

Ettore Sottsass Jr. is considered one of the most important designers of the 20th century. He is internationally recognized as having renewed the approach to design and architecture, through a spiritual and sensory dimension in the definition of domestic spaces, giving great importance to colour and light. Consultant for Poltronova since 1957 and then for Olivetti in 1958, Sottsass designed furniture, began researching on ceramics, colour and materials, as well as figurative languages. Prefiguring the experiences of radical architecture, Sottsass emerged as a guardian figure for young protest groups such as Superstudio or Archizoom, which would seek in the 1960s and 1970s to rebuild architecture outside the dogmas of functionalist culture. Between 1966 and 1974, Sottsass stopped architecture as such to devote himself to writing and drawing and took an active part in theoretical debates. He produces photographs, installations and conceptual projects that challenge the language of architecture; he reflects on the environment, writes notes on anthropology, questioning, according to Barbara Radice, the very meaning of “building”. Sottsass will co-edit the first issue of the underground magazine of Italian counter-culture: Pianeta fresco, in 1968.