The designer Ettore Sottsass was born on 14 September 1917 in Innsbruck in Austria. He died in Milan in Italy in 2007. During his career as an architect and designer, he shaped the "anti-design" movement and became internationally known.
Ettore Sottsass's career began in 1935 when he started studying architecture at the Politecnico di Torino. After graduating, and after becoming head of Poltronova in 1957, he experimented with fibreglass and used it to develop furniture and lighting.
In 1958, Sottsass began working with Olivetti and caused a stir with his unconventional designs. One of his best-known designs is the Olivetti Valentine typewriter from 1968, now considered a classic, with which he brought office design into pop culture.
Sottsass's designs won over the experts with their playful expression of everyday culture, full of irony and humour, and their opposition to objects as status symbols – making him one of the leading representatives of so-called "anti-design".
In 1980, Ettore Sottsass founded his own company, "Sottsass Associati". The Memphis design group, which he co-founded, also became successful: following postmodern ideas, it proclaimed the end of the "International Style".
Besides Olivetti, the companies Sottsass worked for during his career included well-known names such as Alessi, Poltronova and Knoll International.
As part of the Busstops project in 1994, Sottsass also created the bus stop at Königsworther Platz in Hanover in Germany, placing eight large yellow crosses on a speckled base and covering them with a white roof. Frank Gehry and Alessandro Mendini were among the others who took part in the project.
Ettore Sottsass's work is known and loved around the world. Exhibitions on his life's work have been held at the Venice Biennale, the Centre Pompidou in Paris in France and the Design Museum in London in the UK, among others.
