Duncanrig Secondary School Department of Art&Design Art & Design Studies Learner’s N5 Outcome 1: Art & Design Studies Design Factsheet Product: Lighting

N4: Describe the things that have inspired and influenced designers and their work by:

N4: 1.1 Describing how designers use design materials, techniques and/or technology in their work N4: 1.2 Describing the things that have influenced these designers and the work they produce N4: 1.3 Expressing facts and personal opinions about the designers’ work

A study of Ettore Sottsass (1917 – 2007)

CLICK ON LINK BELOW TO VIEW RELEVANT IMAGES

https://www.designboom.com/cms/images/z101/es18.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/88/99/42/889942fadca664c68b38c22a63a9af91--memphis-design-floor-lamps.jpg http://www.italianways.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ettore-sottsass-tahiti-lamp-03-665x886.jpg

Ashoka Lamp, 1981 Bay Table Lamp, Memphis, 1983 Tahiti Lamp, 1981 image © designboom image © nova68 image © designboom

What is Product/Lighting Design?

Product designers have a huge influence on the form, function and style of many of the objects we use in our daily lives – everything from kettles and lamps to telephones and televisions, or more specialist products, such as medical equipment. Individual designers often focus on a particular area, such as consumer electronics, automotive design or indeed medical equipment, but many of the product designer’s skills are transferable between projects and products. As well as the 3D design abilities, product designers need to have a broad understanding of other important factors such as ergonomics, materials, manufacturing processes, branding, marketing, lifestyles, trends and so on.

Lighting is a specific product design area with specific design issues in function, materials and ergonomics. For instance different lighting applications include task lighting (for particular purpose, such as desk lamps) ambient lighting to create mood and atmosphere and accent lighting, to create interest or draw attention to a particular feature in a room. Materials and aesthetics can be considered as part of a wider interior design project or independently as a single artifact. Lighting designs can be custom made or mass produced. Duncanrig Secondary School Department of Art&Design Art & Design Studies

Ettore Sottsass (1917 – 2007)

Ettore Sottsass was an Italian architect and designer of the late 20th century. Best known as the founder of the early 1980's Memphis collective, His body of designs included furniture, jewellery, glass, lighting and office machine design. Ettore Sottsass was inspired by many things and carried a camera everywhere he went to photograph anything that caught his eye. Doors, temples, kitchens, and billboards: nothing escaped him. This was a man who took 1,780 photographs on a twelve-day trip to South America. Ettore Sottsass (www.woont.com) Early Career Sottsass was born on 14 in , Austria, and grew up in , where his father was an architect. He was educated at the Politecnico di Torino in and graduated in 1939 with a degree in architecture. He served in the Italian military and spent much of World War II in a concentration camp in Yugoslavia. After returning home in 1947, he set up his own architectural and industrial design studio in Milan. In 1959, Sottsass began working as a design consultant for Olivetti, designing office equipment such as typewriters, hired by the founder Adriano Olivetti, to work alongside his son, Roberto. Sotsasse made a name for himself as a designer here, bring office equipment to the attention of popular culture, through the use of colour and form and styling. In 1959 he won won the prestigious 1959 Compasso d’Oro with the Elea 9003, the first Italian mainframe computer. Throughout the 1960s, Sottsass travel in the US and India and influenced the products he designed for Olivetti. These objects including his "Superboxes" were radical but still consumerist products. However, he felt stifled by commercial work and as a result his work from the late 60's to the '70s was defined by experimental collaborations with younger designers such as Superstudio and Archizoom, and association with the Radical movement, culminating in the foundation of Memphis at the turn of the decade. In 1981, Sottsass and an international group of young architects and designers came together to form the Memphis Group. A night of drinking and listening to Bob Dylan's "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again" gave the group its name. Memphis was launched with a collection of 40 pieces of furniture, ceramics, lighting, glass and textiles, which featured fluorescent colours, slick surfaces, intentionally lop-sided shapes and squiggly laminate patterns. The group's colourful, almost deliberately ‘cheesy’ pieces were hailed as one of the most characteristic examples of Post-modernism in design and the arts. Sottsass described Memphis in a 1986 Chicago Tribune article: "Memphis is like a very strong drug. You cannot take too much. I don't think anyone should put only Memphis around: It's like eating only cake.” Sottsass Associati Whilst the Memphis movement in the eighties attracted enormous attention around the world for its energy and flamboyance, Ettore Sottsass was simultaneously assembling a major design consultancy, which he named Sottsass Associati. The studio was established in 1980 and gave the possibility to build architecture on a substantial scale as well as to design for large international industries. Sottsass Associati, primarily an architectural practice, also designed elaborate stores and showrooms for Esprit, identities for Alessi, exhibitions, interiors, consumer electronics in Japan and furniture of all kinds. The studio was based on the cultural guidance of Ettore Sottsass and the work conducted by its many young associates, whom over the years often left to open their own studios. Sottsass Associati are presently based in and Milan and continue to sustain the work, philosophy and culture of the studio. www.designmuseum.org/design/ettore-sottsass; www.design-technology.org/ettoresottsass.htm

Duncanrig Secondary School Department of Art&Design Art & Design Studies

Ettore Sottsass, 14/9/1917 - 31/12/2007

Colour Form Function & Purpose Sources of inspiration Consider… Consider… What is the piece for? Primary, secondary, Consider… tertiary Type of shapes used Consider… Warm & cold to create the form Where the designer Contrasts (individual, several, Target market – has got their ideas from Complimentary repeated, gender/age group/ social Subtle symmetrical/soft, class/ wealth How these ideas have Bold angular, curved, Target location (where been transformed or The source of colour simple, intricate) design would be worn – developed Colour of solids, personal use/ catwalk/ etc background, line etc exhibition) Desired effect Do the colours in the etc piece come from the materials used? Aesthetics and style etc Consider… Ergonomics The historical period of Consider… the piece: Contemporary, modern The fit of the piece to the 50s, 60s, etc wearer Elegant, fun, futuristic, Size (normal, miniature, kitsch, quirky,sleek, exaggerated) sophisticated, glitzy… How and where the piece should be worn Any design movement Safety issues the designer belonged Comfort considerations to: Art Deco Art Nouveau etc etc

Techniques etc

Pattern and texture Consider…

Consider: Casting Bay table Lamp designed by Ettore Sottsass in Soldering 1983 for Memphis in glass, aluminum and Carving plexiglass. Are there any texture effects (smooth, shiny, Engraving jagged, matte etc) Enamelling How have these been Polishing created e.g. integral to Forging Materials Cost the choice of materials or selected and created If it’s a complex piece, Consider… Consider… by the maker? can you see how it might Is there any pattern in have been constructed? Man-made/natural Target market the design? Has it

Metals, plastics, Hand-made/mass- been created randomly Are the techniques used ceramic, clay, glass produced traditional/modern/unusua or deliberately? What Recycled/inexpensive Type of materials does it add to the l/simple/complicated/time- Rare/easily obtainable used overall design? consuming/carried out by etc etc hand, tools or machinery?