Color as a matter of space

One hundred years later, the style of Ettore Sottsass continues to amaze. Thanks to the originality of his creations, timeless works that also adapt perfectly to contemporary contexts. To celebrate the centenary of the birth of great master of Italian design and the tenth anniversary of his death, La Triennale di Milano dedicates a monographic exhibition to him: There is a Planet, under construction until March 11, 2018.
The title itself is already a stylistic choice: it is in fact a project by Sottsass himself, developed (although never completed) in the early 90s for the German publisher Wasmuth. The initial project included a subdivision into five thematic areas and included photographs taken by the designer during his travels around the world. Images of architecture, people, and living styles that testified to the different ways in which man lives on the planet.
The exhibition on show at the Triennale was born with the intention of taking up the threads of this project, divided into nine rooms, each dedicated to a specific theme identified following the reading of Sottsass's writings.

In each room, therefore, one finds not only the master's works, but also short quotes from his memoirs, with the aim of accompanying the visitor along the creative path that led to the creation of those works. It is not a journey through time: the intent of the exhibition is not to expose the personality of Ettore Sottsass following a chronological line, but rather to show the public his creative impulses, his sensations, the phases of his work.
Moments that, in the master's history, often overlap and blend into each other, composing a multifaceted individuality, which does not stop at design alone but also embraces other arts such as architecture, photography, sculpture, drawing and writing.

Story of an Intellectual

Ettore Sottsass was not only a point of reference for the history of Italian design. Ettore Sottsass belonged to a category that is unfortunately becoming extinct today: he was a intellectual.

This means not only that he was a man with many interests, from design to photography, from writing to architecture, but also that each of his projects, whatever their nature, was capable of generating reactions. Whether they were thoughts, reflections, criticisms, Sottsass's work was talked about anyway.

And this is precisely the figure that distinguishes the figure of the intellectual. As it was for another great Italian intellectual of the twentieth century, Pier Paolo Pasolini, also Ettore Sottsass had the merit of overturning the value system of the era in which he lived. His projects do not follow a canon, they reject any label: they simply are.
Reflecting on the figure of Ettore Sottsass, the only attempt, however incomplete, to frame his work could consist in comparing his creative impulse to Joyce's steam of consciousness: his work, in fact, was a continuous flow and proceeded with strength, power and, yes, even faith. Sottsass, in fact, he believed in his own plans, although he rejected the idea that they were always clear and limpid. Observing the master's works, one always perceives something more, something that escapes, that overflows, that eludes the mental schemes through which we frame physical reality and give meaning to things.

Sottsass's aim was not to "construct", but to break down, to create unexpected analogies, daring juxtapositions, proceeding not in search of a "sense" but through the senses.. Each of his works is therefore deeply felt, experienced, shaped in progress. And it is precisely this characteristic that makes Ettore Sottsass a great artist.

Color as a matter of space

Sottsass's multifaceted and colorful design launches itself into a search for meanings from the world of the unconscious, where colour becomes the vital soul of the furniture and the very material of the space. His design objects are like sculptures or “domestic totems”, which have a symbolic and metaphorical value, as well as a precise functionality. These objects are often small architectures.
Architectures that draw inspiration from the magical world and the dream world. In his critical thought Sottsass, argued that “Design does not solve problems: it produces desires”. For this reason he has always been in search of profound meanings that go beyond rationality and mere functionalism, to the point of conceiving design as a “therapeutic action” that “helps people to live”, and which stimulated "the perception that each person has or can have of their own earthly adventure".

Author: Arch. Roberto Carlando
www.robertocarlando.com

Cover photo: Ottavia Mangiagalli