An architect, designer, and writer, Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007) is internationally recognized as one of the most important design figures of the 20th century. After studying architecture at the Politecnico di Torino, from which he graduated in 1939, he participated in the reconstruction of Milan following World War II. This experience allowed him to explore social housing programs and interior design. He established his own design studio in Milan in 1947.

In 1956, Sottsass traveled to the United States and worked at George Nelson’s firm, where he experimented with materials such as steel, aluminum, chrome, and glass, as well as new organizational models between industrialists and artists. That same year, he became a design consultant for the Italian company Olivetti. He contributed to the creation of Italy’s first computer, the Elea 9003, which he conceived as an “electronic landscape” and for which he received the prestigious Compasso d’Oro International Design Award (1959).

Sottsass also worked as artistic director for Poltronova, designing furniture that foreshadowed the radical architecture experiments of the 1960s. His vision of life and art was profoundly transformed by his travels to India (1961) and California (1962), where he encountered new ways of living, Pop Art, and poets and writers of the Beat Generation. These experiences led him to reconsider the social and political dimensions of object and design production.

Between 1966 and 1974, Sottsass temporarily abandoned architecture to focus on writing, drawing, photography, and conceptual projects that questioned architecture and the act of building. He participated in numerous exhibitions, including “Italy : The New Domestic Landscape” at the MoMA in New York (1972). In 1981, he founded the Memphis Group and the design studio Sottsass Associati.