A tribute to Ettore Sottsass

A Tribute to Ettore Sottsass

Ettore Sottsass, (1917-2008) designer and ardent design philosopher, worked throughout his career to shake the static ways in which people thought about design and to try to create a body of work outside of what he thought were “hierarchic bureaucratic structures of industry.” The influential architect died of heart failure last month at his home in Milan. He was 90.

Although Sottsass was born in Austria, he studied at the Turin Polytechnic and is identified as one of the major forces behind the immense wave of design that began flowing out of Italy after the war. His main interest was in creating objects that challenged the icons of Italian design that he felt functioned in terms of status and money. By constantly questioning and rethinking ideas and processes, Sottsass’ work teeters on the very edge of the anti-design movement. He never ceased to imply the importance of design in society, however, stating that, “to me design…is a way of discussing life. It is a way of discussing society, politics, eroticism, food and even design.”

So many everyday things could bring you into an intimate physical connection with this aster’s work and inventive mind. At home, the bed, taps, door handles could all have been designed by him, so could the kitchen furniture, desks and chairs, and even light switches to choose from. This is the man, who brought design into our everyday life.

Sottsass showed that it was possible to understand design as a cultural as well as a technical issue. When he designed the Valentine portable typewriter for Olivetti in 1969, with the British designer Perry King, he was able to turn a piece of office equipment into a desirable object by understanding that there are emotions involved as well as ergonomics in the way that we use and understand our possessions.

The Valentine was fashioned out of bright red plastic, with twin splashes of vivid orange for the spools; turning it from a machine into a kind of toy. As he put it himself, “the sort of thing to keep lonely poets company on Sundays in the country”. Four decades later, Jonathan Ive did the same for Apple, with the iPod, turning technology that grew out of office equipment into a desirable possession.

Like his father, also called Ettore, Sottsass saw himself first and foremost as an architect. Almost all Italian designers trained as architects, and too many of them want to go back to designing buildings, even though they are manifestly better sticking to the scale of cutlery and chairs. Sottsass was an exception in that he really was a highly gifted architect, even though he was entirely outside the mainstream.

In architecture, he sought to imbue emotion and delight as well. The Mayer-Schwarz gallery in Beverly Hills, with its dramatic doorway made of irregular folds and jagged angles. He even managed to build an apartment in the unlikely setting of Albany in London for Johnny Pigozzi, the celebrity photographer.

The Memphis Movement,компютри started in 1981 by Sottsass and his friends, broke down barriers between high and low art, between assumptions of “good” and ‘bad” taste, and raised the question of access to art design by people of all economic backgrounds. They created furniture and other objects with bright colours, slick surfaces, off shapes and sizes. In an interview with Pure Commentary, he said, “We tried to design without thinking of the conditions the “industrial culture” had imposed and is still imposing with all the possible means, legal or illegal, to define what is “good” and “bad” taste.

Ettore Sottsass was a great man. An icon whose design challenged the tenets of modern design. He propelled functionality with design and made it a success, allowing normal people like everyone of us to come into contact with good art everyday.

http://www.urbanespaces.com/sottsass.html –An avant garde design modern bungalow by Sottsass.