colors are like words. with colors you can tell stories. —ettore sottsass



Ettore Sottsass wearing moustache, looking downwards

Ettore Sottsass, 1984. © Barbara Radice.

color and architecture

As an architect, Sottsass worked with vivid colors, and many of his buildings look almost as if built of Lego pieces. For materials, he used bricks, wood and stone. “I was recently in a building where everything was made of glass, even the floor. I walked like a turtle—it felt as if it was going to shatter under me. That’s not right, at least as far as I’m concerned,” he said.

when i began designing machines, i also began to think that these objects, which sit next to each other and around people, can influence not only physical conditions but emotions as well. they can touch the nerves, the blood, the muscles, the eyes and the moods of people. —ettore sottsass


A square-shaped robot on 16 small wheels