Ettore Sottsass
Ettore Sottsass, an Italian designer with an irreverent touch best known for creating Olivetti's iconic red, plastic typewriter, has died, officials said Tuesday. He was 90.
Sottsass died Monday of heart failure at his Milan home after battling the flu, news reports said. The Culture Ministry confirmed his death Tuesday.
He designed everyday items such as silverware, ice buckets, table lamps and office cabinets, glass and ceramics for Alessi and electronic products for Olivetti. In the 1980’s he founded the Memphis design group.
He was born in Innsbruck in 1917. His father, Ettore Sottsass Senior, was an architect. He studied architecture at Turin University and later worked for his father. In the late 1950’s he became a consultant to the electronics division of Olivetti. He created a series of technically innovative products – including the first Italian computer, the Elea 9003, and the bright red plastic 1970 Valentine typewriter.
An architect by training, Sottsass's creations for Olivetti over the course of a decades-long collaboration and an edgy style — marked by use of colorful plastic laminates and unusual shapes — established him as an innovator in postwar design.
He later formed the radical Memphis group of Italian and international designers and architects to challenge mainstream design.
Sottsass designed everything from office equipment and lighting to ceramics, furniture and jewelry.
He was born in Innsbruck, Austria, and studied architecture in the northern Italian city of Turin. He opened his first studio in Milan in the late 1940s.
A decade later, in 1958, he joined the design team at Olivetti, bringing color and informality to gray office environments over several decades. The iconic "Valentine" red portable typewriter, released in 1969, was among works that transformed office design.
With the Memphis group, which he formed in 1981, Sottsass created some of his trademark work, such as the Casablanca and Carlton units. The group shook up the Milanese design scene, and eventually was seen as highly influential.
Sottsass parted with the group in 1985 to concentrate on Sottsass Associati, his Milan based architecture and design practice.
Sottsass' work has been on display in some of the world's most prestigious museums. Currently, over 100 works are on exhibit in the Italian northeastern city of Trieste. The retrospective runs through March 2.
