Ettore Sottsass

Ettore Sottsass – Architecture studies in Turin; turn to industrial design

Ettore Sottsass was born in Innsbruck on 14 September 1917 the son of an Italian architect of the same name and his Austrian wife. Towards the end of the 1920s, he moved with his family to Turin where he initially intended to follow in his father’s footsteps, starting an architecture course at the polytechnic in 1935. He graduated with a diploma in 1939, but due to seven years of military service, had to wait a long time before he could earn his stripes as an architect and designer. Sottass never spoke about why he willingly joined Mussolini’s troops. After the war he worked with his famous father on the reconstruction of Italy’s ruins – totally in the spirit of Modernism. After the premature death of his father, Sottsass junior set up his own studio in Milan, and two years later married the journalist Fernanda Pivano. During this time, he discovered his passion and talent for industrial design. 

Artistic director at Poltronova; world fame with Olivetti Valentine

The young designer’s virgin ideas soon attracted attention and led to further interesting contracts: With his innovative designs of contemporary furniture and lighting, in 1958 Ettore Sottsass laid the foundation for a decade of success as artistic director of the Poltronova company, newly founded by Sergio Cammilli, where he also experimented with fiberglass, a new material at the time. Sottsass also had great success collaborating with the office machine producer Olivetti, for which he conceived not only the first Italian computer, the Olivetti Elea, but also notably his world-famous red typewriter, the Olivetti Valentine. This milestone of industrial design which Sottsass had created together with Perry A-King, delighted fellow designers and celebrities alike, and alongside the Braun mastermind Dieter Rams, the popstar David Bowie was one of the proud owners. At that time, the Italians were a series competitor to the American high-tech company Apple – the competition was only lost in later years. 

With the designer collective to the top of the world

Ettore Sottsass had struggled throughout his life with strong melancholic tendencies and depression, which he himself attested with a frequently quoted comparison: life is primarily a series of goodbyes. Sottsass contrasts this so imperfect and incomplete world with his often agonisingly colourful designs. Even his first masterpiece, the Olivetti Valentine, was inspired by the wish that the device would be a comfort on lonely days. It was not originally planned as an exclusive collector’ piece but constructed as robustly as possible out of cheap materials and solely fitted with capital letters. Over the years, Sottsass became ever more unsatisfied with the result; he who had developed so many great design concepts felt unjustly reduced to his early stroke of genius. He owned his own company from 1980, and that same year participated in the founding of the Memphis designer collective which propagated the end of the international style and embraced postmodernism. With that, Italian design art finally made the leap to the top of the world. In 1994, Sottsass designed a bus stop at Königsworther Platz for the Hannover art project BUSSTOPS.

Ettore Sottsass died in Milan on 31 December 2007.