Ettore Sottsass (chart designer5)

He was born in 1917 in Innsbruck, Austria, and died in 2007 in Milan Italy. He was an Italian architect and product designer of the late 20th century. Attended Turin University. Sottsass was the founder of the Memphis group in the early 1960's.
He designed some iconic electronic products for Olivetti, recognizable glass and ceramics.

After the war, electronics was a huge buisness. He changed the cold, scary machines into friendly, fun and aesthetically pleasing

Interesting video about Ettore Sottsass: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMDwp03xDvI

His blood-red "Valentine" typewriter manufactured in 1969 was a fun, bright and playful design inspired from the Pop-Design movement. It was too expensive to ever mass-produce, but became a classic. It also focused a lot on appearance and had several functional limitations. 

The Carlton bookcase and room-divider designed in 1981 os one of the most iconic pieces from the Memphis Group. It was made out of wood and laminated plastic. Its depth-ness laminated materials are all Memphis trademarks. It has traditional wall shelving, and the vertical and horizontal structure is a multipurpose, dynamic object, and like a sculpture it can stand on its own. It was inspired from Sottsass' time in India. Colourful with meaningful symbolism, just like Indian culture. 

The cubistand geometric order of space and also the bright colours remind me of Rietveld's Red and Blue chair, 1918.

Rietveld's Red&Blue chair, 1918.

The Mandarin Chair was designed in 1986. He was inspired by the Chinese Ming dynasty. He initially chose primary colours, green, grey and black combined with different variations of colour. Sadly, these vintage chairs are not in production anymore. The wood armrests are vapor-bent and goes around the entire chair.

Deyan Sudjic. (2008). ettore sottsass architect and product designer.Available: http://designmuseum.org/design/ettore-sottsass. Last accessed 25th january 2014.