At the Milan Triennale the fifth exhibition cycle dedicated to architect Ettore Sottsass

Triennale Milano presents from October 4, 2024 to April 13, 2025 the exhibition ETTORE SOTTSASS. ARCHITECTURES PAESAGES ROVINE curated by Marco Sammicheli, with Barbara Radice and Iskra Grisogono of Studio Sottsass, and with art direction by Christoph Radl. This fifth project in the exhibition cycle dedicated to designer and architect Ettore Sottsass Jr (Innsbruck, 1917 - Milan, 2007) explores architecture through drawing, bringing out a reflection on time and design. ARCHITECTURE PAESAGES ROVINE is set up inside Sala Sottsass, where the permanent installation of Casa Lana has been located since January 2021: the interior of a residence designed by Sottsass around the mid-1960s in Milan.

The exhibition brings together drawings and sketches by Sottsass related to the themes of architecture, landscape and ruins. In order to bring visitors closer to Sottsass’s thinking on architecture, a few drawings from the period after Memphis and a 1992 text entitled Rovine have been privileged. Excerpts from this text accompany enlargements of the drawings on the wall, along with other reflections by Sottsass that bring out his desire to privilege in design “the part that is lived in over the part that is seen.” The exhibition is accompanied by a publication in Italian and English edited by Dario Cimorelli that carries the text Rovine by Ettore Sottsass in its entirety, as well as those by Stefano Boeri, Marco Sammicheli, Barbara Radice and Christoph Radl. The publication brings together Sottsass’s selection of drawings and writings exhibited at the Triennale. Technical Partner Terreal Italia, Design and Architecture Partner Idealista, and Institutional Partners Lavazza Group and Salone del Mobile. Milan also support Triennale Milano for this exhibition.

"Casa Lana acts as a device of thought, acts as a tool of investigation around which, over the years, a series of exhibitions has been developed dedicated to different aspects of Sottsass’s work, from the relationship between structure and color to calculation, from speech to ’Design Metaphors.’ With the exhibition and publication ETTORE SOTTSASS. ARCHITECTURE PAESAGGI ROVINE we are therefore happy to continue the research work on this great romantic hero," says Stefano Boeri, president of Triennale Milano.

“The device of Sala Sottsass once again hosts a menabout in which literature, drawing, graphics and design unfold in space an idea of time inhabitable by man. Ettore Sottsass embraces the present as a unique time to design. For him, the abscissa of time is far more important than the ordinate of space. He elaborates a personal architectural philosophy that makes no reference whatsoever to precise compositional logic,” says Marco Sammicheli, Director of the Museum of Italian Design.

Practical information

Fee: 5 euros

Hours: Tuesday - Sunday 10:30 a.m. - 8 p.m. (last entrance at 7 p.m.)

Image: exhibition set-up. Photo: Gianluca Di Ioia.

At the Milan Triennale the fifth exhibition cycle dedicated to architect Ettore Sottsass

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