SelfSelector

Last year, around early summer (probably as a consecuence of my work as a staff editor at a design magazine) I started feeling the urge of interviewing Ettore Sottsass. I didnt know why, but it became a mission. I had come across with his Carlton room divider burned out and varnished with epoxy as a part of a project of Maarten Baas, a young dutch designer I like a lot, and I realized that the essence of this colourful and ironic Italian designer with a strange name had hipnotised me.

I didnt know yet that 2007 was going to be “the revival year” of Sottsass, not only because next September he will be 90 years-old (he was born in Innsbruck in 1917), but also because the Design Museum of London inaugurates a big retrospective on him just tomorrow. But sometimes these things are in the air and you just need to grasp them. I started making contacts aroud July and, finally, last October I took a plane to my beloved Milano to interview him at his place. There I was. It was, without any doubt, the most exciting interview I was going to make for quite some time.
I have been researching like mad and preparing the interview for at least a couple of months, but the night before, at some cheap Milano hotel, I could barely sleep. I was going to meet one the stars of Italian counter-desing, the father of Memphis, the most exciting thing that happened in the world of Design during the 80′s and which Im not even sure if it has been overcome yet.

Left: Grey Furniture table and chairs, for Poltronova (1970). Right: Asteroid mirror (1969).

On the taxi, trying to get as closer as possible to the Doumo neighbourhood, where he lives, I calmed down a bit with the photographer, who was rather nervous as well. On arriving to his flat we were surprised by how modest and small it was. Nothing fancy, nothing “too designed”, not even if in his extravagant anti-bourgeois style. No. Some pieces of his furniture, like a small sidetable or a chest of drawers, some of his miniatures, that you can buy at the bookstore of Triennale, some original pictures and a portrait with his wife Barbara Radice by Helmut Newton (a dear friend) and books. Books and more books, specialy on Arts and Architecture. The walls were covered by his drawings of playful interiors and buddihst imaginery (the religion that changed his life when he travelled to India in the 60′s, with his first wife, Fernanda Pivano). Not much more. A humble flat, the shelter of one the most famous designers in History.

Ettore Sottsass was sitting in the living room, helping an assistant from his studio with some kind of strange sculpture and listening to the radio. He was wearing slippers, not at all bothered to dress up for a photo session for a well-known magazine. He was just like in the all the pics I had seen before, with those puppy eyes and that long and thing plait of white hair that has become his trademark. At 89, his body was tired and he didnt want to move a lot, complaining about his back, but he oozed an air of sweetness and intelligence that will never abandon him for as long as he lives.

Our interview began, first in English to then mutate to a mix of that, Italian and Spanish. The goal was to make each other understood. Its all about the Mediterranean, isn’t it?

Now is so very common to talk about “emotional design”, which I think it is an approach you started in the late 50’s and that, in your case, I think it not only refers as being ‘user friendly’ like in your work for Olivetti, but also because you projected own feelings and experiences in your objects.

Well, I always call it sensorial design, because its your senses that allow you to explore and understand an object. Your eyes, your fingers, even your nose. That’s why the materials are so important. Objects can change your daily life, make it exciting, happier and more poetic.

These days some of best galleries from all over the world are specialized in selling not proper painting, or sculpture or anything like that, but very limited pieces of furniture by names like you, Prouvé, Nelson, Superstudio, Wegner and all the rest of great designers. Do you think that Design and Art melt or you think they should belong to different categories with different functions?

Yes, that is happening, but I don’t think it’s a problem and that Art and Design should be separated fields. The key is making a difference between designers and industrial designers. Nowadays, Im NOT an industrial designer. I have been one, a for a lot time, like all those years I worked for Olivetti and the rest, but eventually I have found my space in the world of the galleries because I cant find anymore companies that allow me to do what I want and whose principles I respect. Right now, my pieces are produced exclusively for two galleries: the Ernest Mourmans in Belgium and the Bischofberger in Switzerland.

You started your career as an architect, working first with your dad and then alone, before having to quit and then working for a longtime on design. You came back to it in the 80’s, when you said you were ready. Why were you ready at that point?

I studied Architecture at the Torino Polytechnic and soon was helping my father in his studio, but it all crashed with the Second World War. I went to the front and got prisoner in Yugoslavia, where I was held in a prisoner camp during the most boring years of my life. After the war, there wasn’t much money for Architecture, so Design was the perfect way out and, in the end, took most of my working life. I came back to Architecture in my late 70′s and formed Sottsass Associati. Thats when I felt ready to face the discipline. You have to be calm and sensitive to do that job.

Van Impe House. St. Lievens Houtem, Belgium. Sottsass Associati (1996-98).

Olivetti was the one brand that made you famous for the first time. How did an architect and painter ended with that job?

Olivetti was an industrial design experience like I couldn’t have dreamed to have. I became close friends with the son of Adriano Olivetti, Roberto. Roberto was the president of the electronic department, that was just starting in 1959. We used to go out and have dinner and discuss for hours and hours about what could be done to make products that were nice and human for the user. Around that time, the computers were something very new and were as big as a whole room, so we wanted to design tools that didn’t scare or bore the workers. I didn’t have a clue of that technological world that was beginning, but I was designing what I would like to use if I would have to. I always design for myself, what I would like or need.

Your career was built in position of pushing the line, proposing something new and bold, challenging the people and the industry. It was a very political attitude, compromised with your own values. These days the design world in general seem a bit flat, very focused on a aesthetical proposal but a bit empty, meaningless. Your approach, although very different in the results, seems to be a bit more connected nowadays with dutch design, or with the work of some Brits.

In Olivetti, for instance, we spoke of concepts, about the future, about what we wanted to make out of it. Now it would be impossible to speak on that terms because now all the conversations are focused on sales, targets and marketing. That’s why I’m not interested anymore in being part of that, of the Industry. The designers seem anesthetized by the Industry, by the weight of being part of it. That’s why maybe there are less challenging and surprising ideas. The aggressiveness of this industry is killing the creativity. If you open a magazine or go to a furniture fair, you will see 200 sofas and chairs that look the same. It seems people these days are obsessed with designing chairs. Its becoming all quite boring.

Left: Summa 19 calculator, Olivetti (1970). Right: Malabar room divider, Memphis (1982).

It is often said, because of your bold use of materials, symbols and colours, that you were one of the fathers of Postmodern design. Would you say you connected with the Postmodernism flow that was starting in the 60’s?

No, not at all. Postmodernist proposed a return to classic values. They were not Modern but conservatory. I have always felt more identificated with “Pop”, with Learning from Las Vegas by Robert Venturi, that for me means a Pop point of view and comes from the United States. I wanted to overcome the rigidity of Modernism, but in a different way.

You have said you started as a functionalist, maybe influenced by your father, but that at an early point you changed to another direction. What made you change?

I didn’t change, it was my idea of function that changed. Functionalists were worried basically by ergonomics but I realized there were another concepts in daily life that were equally important, maybe in subtle but just as important way. Emotional, sensorial, spiritual and even erotic functions. And that was the path I started to work on.

So you started being quite young a path from the margins, maybe, not really caring for the system and its static laws. But nevertheless you were accepted and adored by the industry since you entered Olivetti. Later, with even more rebellious production, like your ceramic or glass, or your furniture for Poltronova or Memphis, not really something easily digestible for the mass taste, you were always recognised and celebrated. Were you surprised when you were hailed by the same system you were trying to upgrade? Was success something you expected?

Well, I don’t consider that I have been commercially successful, but so I was in the world of critics. I could expect some success, yes, it didn’t surprise me a lot. But it was never an extra motivation or a goal. I just wanted to do my stuff. At the “vernissage” of the first Memphis exhibition, here in Milano at 1981, the street was packed with people that wanted to take a look at it, and it was really a great feeling. But I think I am more motivated by other things, because the other day the 5 year-old nephew of a friend saw one of my drawings and got fascinated and that made me feel a lot better (laughs). It was the biggest compliment ever.

Laminated silk-screens with Bacterio (left) and Spugnato (right) patterns, ABET (1978).

Tell me about the colour. If there is something unique in your work is the master use of colour, without any kind of fear, in each one of your pieces. You even wrote than colour should dictate structure and not in reverse (Struttura e Colore, 1954), which contradicts the very history of architecture. Is this something you really think or a very polemic and powerful statement? Why do you think colour is so unpopular?

Colour it is fundamental to me, and my palette is so very bright. Some people say they are primary colours, but I call them “gas station colours”. And they are the colours I used when I was a kid and I was learning to draw, strong and pure. Why I use them? Because they mean freedom and the reject of prejudices. It’s a shame, but yes, colour is still something unpopular. The predominant shades are white, black, beige… I think the reason is that it is just easier. If you go all dressed in black is very easy. But if you start mixing colours it means an extra effort to combine them. Its laborious and risky. That scares people and it’s a real shame. Bright colours are for a happy and fearless society.

Is it being polemic, rebelling against the establishment, something you looked for? Are you a designer or a anti-designer? You challenged the consumer, a bit “guerrilla style”, but from within the system, using its tools. Is that the true counter-desing, breaking from inside?

No, it was never my intention to be a counter-designer or rebelling against the system.
I was just a bit critical, so I wanted to do something different, to propose another possibility and working on things that made me happy at the same time. My proposal was never charged with aggressiveness, at least as far as a I see it. If people took it like something shocking or disturbing, it’s something I can’t change, but it was never my intention.

What do you think of the terms “good/bad taste”? Do you find it bourgeois?

To me it’s a matter of culture and ignorance. Every society has its own aesthetic code, even each person has one. Sometimes you don’t like something just because you don’t understand it, you don’t understand the concept behind it. But I don’t use good or bad taste because I find them meaningless. I prefer using interesting or not interesting.

If something so powerful as Memphis happened now, probably Ikea would take three months to launch super cheap version collection of it. Would that make you happy or a bit mad?

Its is possible, yes. But there is something that will never be repeated, and even less in a industrial production, and it is the fact that Memphis was a project about ideas. Revolutionary ideas based on contradiction, like mixing poor materials (laminated plastic) with rich materials (like wood). I always thought that using two different languages produces a new life. Or changing the symmetry axis, like the Carlton shelf. Memphis was a conceptual project made by a group of friends, architects, designers and artists (Andrea Brazi, Michele de Lucchi, Matteo Thun, Nathalie de Pasquier…). We just made the prototypes for that exhibition. We didn’t expect that reception in the first place and I decided to leave it in 1985, when it had all gotten too exposed and had lost its sense.

Right: Set for a Poltronova exhibtion (1965). Carlton room divider, Memphis (1981).

You are mentioned as an icon for many designers these days. But who is the icon of the icon?

I have always admired George Nelson, for whom I worked briefly in 1956 on my first trip to the United Stated. I also like Mies, Le Corbusier, Barragán, Aldo Rossi…

Both your furniture, and your architecture, even the small pieces, they are all standing on podiums, which is something very distinctive of your work. Why this?

Because a podium calls your attention and highlights the object. It becomes like a little monument, doesn’t it?

Do you like seeing your pieces used in a house? Lets say you see your Carlton shelf full of books and stuff. Do you like it to see it used or you prefer it to be empty, displayed like a piece of art?

Used, always used. That is its function. I detest being called and “artist”. Im not an artist. I am an architect and a designer.

You have said that your objects are very architectural but I also think that your architecture resembles those objects sometimes. You also use the classic roof and the round door in all your houses. Do you believe in the power of the symbols of the traditional shelter, a home that looks like home?

Objects have to be compact, but in house you live for hours and hours, so they have to be more sophisticated. You can’t think of a house as a façade but as interior spaces and how they relate to each other, and their orientation. Houses are not architecture, they are more like a present that the architect makes to a friend. Right now, I don’t know who to give one to. There are such few people who deserve it…

You also tend to employ vernacular materials, wherever they are built, maybe to better melt with the landscape. Are you against the architecture which screams ‘look at me’, even disturbing the context (which is so very common in the buildings these days)?

No, I think that a piece good architecture stands alone in any context. It looks good anywhere you build it. I don’t think you have to design to match the landscape.

The fact that you build private architecture, mostly houses, is related to avoiding the censure of working for institutions?

It is. I don’t copulate very well with politics and institutions. I design houses for my friends or people that become my friend very fast. People that I want to work with. When you work for an institution it all becomes a big mess.

Jasmine Hill house, Singapore. Sottsass Associati (1996-2000).

Doing research for this interview I read a million definitions of your persona, but I would like to know how you would describe yourself.

You never know you really are, so any definition I might give you might be wrong.
Im an architect and a designer but Im not any guru. I ve had a very full life in which I have done things right and thing wrong. I have worked a lot, I have broken hearts and had mine broken. I have done many things wrong, but I have been always faithful to my point of view. That’s all I can say.

You have been a celebrated designer, an original architect, you have written essays, articles and poems. You have painted and sculpted, made glass and ceramics, and you’ve even had your pictures (photography another of your passions) published regularly in books and magazines… Do you still have something left to do?

Im a very curious person, that is why I do all these things. And there always be more things to do while you are alive. But I will tell you what Im not interested in doing: building a skyscraper. Im not interested at all in those constructions (laughs).

Left: Poster for the Sottsass retrospective at the Design Museum. Right: Glass sculpture.

The Design Museum of London hosts a big exhibition on Ettore Sottsass :”Work in progress”. From March 29th to June 10th.

Bibliography: “Ettore Sottsass, Architect and Designer” by Ronald T. Labaco. LACMA and Merrell Publishers (2006). “Maestri del Design”, edited by Bruno Mondadori.