Ettore Sottsass. Architecture, Landscapes, Ruins

From October 4, 2024 to April 23, 2025, Triennale Milano will host the exhibition ETTORE SOTTSASS. ARCHITECTURE, LANDSCAPES, RUINS, curated by Marco Sammicheli in collaboration with Barbara Radice and Iskra Grisogono of Studio Sottsass, under the art direction of Christoph Radl.
This fifth project in the series of exhibitions devoted to the great architect and designer explores the world of architecture through the lens of drawing, offering a profound reflection on both time and design.

Like the four previous exhibitions, ARCHITECTURE LANDSCAPES RUINS is being held in the Sala Sottsass, where the permanent installation Casa Lana has been on display since January 2021. Casa Lana is the interior of a private residence in Milan, designed by Sottsass towards the mid-1960s and faithfully reconstructed at Triennale. It has been made accessible to the public thanks to the generous donation by Barbara Radice Sottsass.
Stefano Boeri, President of Triennale Milano, points out that "Casa Lana serves as a conceptual device, an investigative instrument around which a series of exhibitions has been built up over the years, each focusing on different aspects of Sottsass's work—from the interplay between structure and colour to the logic of design, to the word and to 'Design Metaphors'. With the exhibition and publication ETTORE SOTTSASS. ARCHITECTURE LANDSCAPES RUINS, we are delighted to continue our study of this great romantic hero."

Marco Sammicheli, Director of the Museo del Design Italiano, explains that "The Sala Sottsass is once again becoming a space where literature, drawing, graphics, and design come together to express an idea of time that can be inhabited by man. For Ettore Sottsass, the only time in which design can exist is the present. He views the axis of time as far more than the physical axes of space. His personal philosophy of architecture makes not the slightest reference to precise rules of composition."

The exhibition brings together a series of Sottsass's drawings and sketches that examine the themes of architecture, landscape, and ruins, forming a large- format visual narrative on the outer walls of the Sala Sottsass. To help visitors engage more closely with Sottsass's ideas on architecture, the exhibition focuses on a number of drawings from his post-Memphis period and on a 1992 text titled Rovine/Ruins. Excerpts from this text accompany blown-up versions of the drawings on the wall, together with other reflections by Sottsass, where he expresses his preference for focusing his designs on "the part that is inhabited rather than the part that is seen".

ETTORE SOTTSASS. ARCHITECTURE LANDSCAPES RUINS is accompanied by a publication in Italian and English edited by Dario Cimorelli. It contains the complete text of Rovine/Ruins by Ettore Sottsass, as well as essays by Stefano Boeri, Marco Sammicheli, Barbara Radice and Christoph Radl. The book includes a selection of Sottsass's drawings and writings on display at Triennale.... read the rest of the article»