Ettore Sottsass - Oltre il Design (Beyond Design) exhibition, Parma

The exhibition Ettore Sottsass. Beyond design. opened on 18 November at CSAC – Communication Study Centre and Archives of Parma University represents the ideal conclusion of a long year of exhibitions celebrating the 100th anniversary of the architect and designer’s birth. The exhibition “Ettore Sottsass – Rebel and Poet” closed at Vitra Design Museum in September, while “Ettore Sottsass – Design Radical” closed at the Met Breuer in New York in October. 

The current show at CSAC is inspired by an important exhibition and publishing project that began when Ettore Sottsass made a donation to CSAC in 1979, consisting of 24 sculptures and 14,000 items representing his designs, including sketches, drafts and drawings.
A major curatorial team composed of architecture, design and contemporary art historians, designers and archivists worked on the cataloguing and digitalisation of the entire collection, presenting it to the public in the catalogue Ettore Sottsass 1922-1978 (Silvana editoriale, 2017), published on the occasion of the exhibition.
The works selected for the exhibition, about 700 items on display in the CSAC Archives and Museum, are arranged in chronological order, starting with a childhood drawing the architect made in 1922. The exhibition reveals a number of constants in the architect’s way of working, such as the key role assigned to drawing used not only as a tool for design but above all as an instrument for formal verification and reflection on what he designed.

(Agnese Bifulco)

Title: Ettore Sottsass. Oltre il design
Dates: 18 November 2017 – 8 April 2018
Location: CSAC - Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione www.csacparma.it
Abbazia di Valserena, Strada Viazza di Paradigna, 1 – Parma – Italy
Graphics: Daniele Ledda (xycomm) with 
Filippo Ferrari, Fabrizio Cantoni and Alessandro Tonelli
Installation: Elisabetta Terragni (Studio Terragni Architetti) with Mike Dolinski and Paola Frigerio
; in collaboration with Maria Chiara Manfredi (CSAC Parma University)
.
Images: Ettore Sottsass, portrait of Ettore Sottsass (Silvia Lelli/Lelli
e Masotti Archivio), Paolo Barbaro (photographs of exhibition installation), Abbazia (Courtesy of CSAC)

in partnership with Politecnico di Milano, Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti, Fondazione Vittoriano Bitossi
with the support of the City of Parma

Curators:
Francesca Balena Arista (Design Department, Politecnico di Milano)
Elisa Boeri (Politecnico di Milano)
Giampiero Bosoni (Design Department, Politecnico di Milano)

Federico Bucci (Politecnico di Milano)

Milco Carboni (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti di Milano, Accademia di Belle Arti Mario Sironi - Sassari)
Giulia Daolio (CSAC Parma University)

Chiara Fauda Pichet (Design Department, Politecnico di Milano)

Chiara Lecce (Design Department, Politecnico di Milano)

Elisabetta Modena (CSAC Parma University)
Emanuele Piccardo (Architecture historian)

Simona Riva (CSAC Parma University)

Marco Scotti (CSAC Parma University)
Marta Sironi (CSAC Parma University)

Marcella Turchetti (Associazione Archivio
 Storico Olivetti)

Marina Vignozzi Paszkowski (Archivio Industriale Bitossi - Fondazione Vittoriano Bitossi)

Francesca Zanella (CSAC Parma University)

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