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Ettore Sottsass with long dark hair and a mustache against abstract colored planes.

Ettore Sottsass

Ettore Sottsass worked across architecture and industrial design, from Olivetti products made with collaborators to the Memphis collective he helped establish in Milan. His 1968 Valentine typewriter and 1981 Carlton room divider show different sides of that practice; this profile concerns Ettore junior, not his architect father.

Ettore junior, born in Innsbruck

This profile concerns Ettore Sottsass junior, the Italian architect and designer born in Innsbruck in 1917. His father, architect Ettore Sottsass senior, was a different person; the distinction helps separate their family and professional histories.1,2

From Turin to a Milan studio

Sottsass studied architecture at the Politecnico di Torino. He established a studio for architecture and industrial design in Milan in 1947, working across buildings, interiors and objects before the later Memphis chapter.2,3

Olivetti and the Valentine

Sottsass began collaborating with Olivetti in 1958. He and Perry King designed the Valentine portable typewriter in 1968; Olivetti manufactured it.3,4

Sources and citations (8)
  1. Ettore Sottsass
  2. Sottsass, Ettore iunior
  3. Ettore Sottsass
  4. Valentine Portable Typewriter, 1968
  5. A graphic story about the Italian design collective Memphis
  6. Milano 1981–1985
  7. Carlton Room Divider, 1981
  8. MoMA

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