The Milan Triennale reconstructs Ettore Sottsass's Wool House.

The Milan Triennale on Friday inaugurated the Sottsass Room, which houses the reconstruction and permanent display of an interior of a private residence, Casa Lana, designed by Ettore Sottsass (Innsbruck, 1917 - Milan, 2007) around the mid-1960s in Milan and now accessible to the public thanks to a donation from Barbara Radice Sottsass. The project comes four years after the major 2017 monographic exhibition Ettore Sottsass. There is a Planet, and the installation can already be visited on the second floor of the Palazzo dell’Arte.

Surrounding the permanent installation at Casa Lana are exhibitions and events highlighting different aspects of the master’s work and thought. Alongside the exhibition cycle, a series of targeted donations will become the nucleus of an important fund of architect Ettore Sottsass jr within the permanent collection of Triennale Milano.

On display at Triennale is the central core of Casa Lana, a wooden structure with sofas arranged to create a protected living space for chatting and listening to music, while the space around it is organized to fulfill various activities and functions. Spaces are optimized because, by eliminating corridors, it creates, in the words of Ettore Sottsass (“Domus,” 1967) “a little square in which one turns and meets.” The layout of the Sala and its philological reconstruction were the subject of an in-depth study by Triennale Milano’s archives and restoration laboratory, in which Luca Cipelletti, who oversaw its installation in the central space on the second floor of Triennale, and Christoph Radl, who oversaw the art direction of the project, among others, participated.

On the occasion of the opening of the Casa Lana installation, the Milan Triennale is also inaugurating a series of exhibitions curated by Marco Sammicheli with exhibition design and graphics by Christoph Radl. Explains Marco Sammicheli, director of Triennale Milano’s Museum of Italian Design, “Starting from the narrative cues of Casa Lana, we imagined a series of exhibitions to address some major themes of the master’s work.” The first exhibition, Ettore Sottsass. Structure and Color, takes the title of an article by Sottsass from 1954. On display are paintings, drawings, photographs and objects that highlight his particular attention to the relationship between man, his needs, his rituals and inhabited space. The second event, Ettore Sottsass. Calculus, from May to November 2022, will address the relationship between large numbers and technology and his collaboration with Olivetti. The third, from December 2022 to April 2023, will give space to the narrative and literary power of Sottsass’s work and will be entitled Ettore Sottsass. The Word.

“Triennale Milano,” says its president Stefano Boeri, “gives the world an extraordinary surprise: the faithful reconstruction of a part of Ettore Sottsass’s Casa Lana, a ’room within a room’ that Triennale has disassembled and reassembled philologically thanks to the collaboration with Iskra Grisogono of Studio Sottsass and the dialogue with the first owner’s family members. Milan is now home to a true time machine, created by one of the international geniuses of the 20th century.”

Triennale Milano with its Museum of Italian Design intend thus to continue the work of promoting and enhancing the masters of Italian design and architecture and strengthening a virtuous system of dialogue with institutions, archives, and study centers to carry out research projects aimed at creating exhibitions, publications and study days. Institutional Partners Eni and Lavazza, Institutional Media Partner Clear Channel and Technical Partner ATM also support Triennale Milano for this exhibition.

The Milan Triennale reconstructs Ettore Sottsass's Wool House.

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