directly. Sottsass has asked people to reconsider the scale of values built up by political status systems, and he has suggested other ways of doing and seeing things. He himself has noted that his output, in terms of actual industrially produced objects, has been relatively small, but he also insists that it is not necessary to possess his work to be affected by it:
His designs are philosophical statements or notes; their importance lies in their ability to communicate rather than their success as products. For him, a good design is like the possibility of going to the moon--very few people will have the opportunity to do it but its existence will change the lives of millions.
Ettore Sottsass was born in Italy and was a student in the 1930s when the Fascists established a cultural program that was nationalist, imperialistic, and isolationist, intended to cut Italy off from the artistic movements and experiments taking place elsewhere in Europe. Designers were then debating issues such as whether arches were preferable to be
...