Maker/Artist
Sottsass, Ettore
Italian architect and designer, 1917-2007
Sottsass was educated in Turin, 1928-1934, and studied architecture at the Polytechnic there from 1935-1939. He was associated with the designer Luigi Spazzapan from 1937-1940. Since 1946, Sottsass has been in private practice as architect, and since 1958 as an industrial designer, in Milan. He has been the Designer Consultant to the Olivetti Company since 1958, and he established an additional office for Olivetti at Ivrea, near Turin, in 1960. He was also a founder-member of the Global Tools group of Milan in 1975. From 1979, Sottsass worked with Studio Alchymia designers. group in Milan. In 1981, he was the founder of the Memphis design group, Milan. He has designed chairs and a table for the Shaughnessy House (Montréal, Québec) and was the Principal of Sottsass Associati in Milan, from 1980 until his death in 2007. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art presented a survey of his work in 2006, and in late 2007 a Sottsass retrospective was mounted in Trieste, Italy. Italian architect and designer.