By Elena Chow
Nearly two decades after his death, Ettore Sottsass feels more contemporary than ever. In 2025, at an exhibition series called “Trônes” in Paris, the world he imagined—bold, polymorphic, unapologetically emotional—is the one design has finally caught up with. Across design fairs from Milan to Miami, his vocabulary of saturated color, playful geometry, and ritual-like domesticity has re-emerged not as nostalgia but as blueprint.
“Casablanca Sideboard”, wood and plastic laminate
Born in 1917, Sottsass founded the Memphis Group in 1981, the postmodern design collective that upended functionalist modernism with its exuberant palettes and forms that flirted with kitsch. In 2025, his influence echoes through new generations of designers who are rejecting minimalism’s chill and rediscovering sensuality, humor, and imperfection. From AI-driven furniture concepts inspired by his 1980s laminates to the viral “digital Memphis” aesthetic on social media, Sottsass’s rebellion feels newly urgent in a world weary of grayscale screens and algorithmic sameness.
Museums, too, are recalibrating their view of him. The Triennale Milano has announced a retrospective titled Ettore Sottsass: The Language of Desire, focusing on his ceramics and photography—works that reveal his lifelong obsession with spirituality and eroticism. Meanwhile, collectors are rediscovering his limited-edition totems and mirror altars, which now read as prototypes for our hybrid age of art-as-object and object-as-statement.
What keeps Sottsass relevant isn’t only his form but his philosophy. “I design things to make people more aware,” he once said—and that awareness, of color, emotion, and contradiction, feels profoundly in 2025. In a time of digital fatigue and environmental precarity, Sottsass’s message endures: design should not anesthetize life; it should intensify it.
“Trônes”, a design exhibition that took place at Galerie Downtown in Paris, has held two editions: the first was in May/June 2023 at 72 rue de l’Université, and the second edition, titled “trônes 2,” is currently running from October 17-22, 2025, at 11 rue Las Cases, 75007.
