From December 12, 2025 to February 15, 2026, Triennale Milano is hosting the exhibition Ettore Sottsass. Mise en scène, curated by Barbara Radice, Micaela Sessa and Studio Sottsass, with art direction by Christoph Radl. The exhibition focuses on the private dimension of the Italian architect and designer, offering an interpretation of his personal and professional life through a wide selection of photographs taken between 1976 and 2007, a period that coincides with the meeting between Sottsass and Barbara Radice and the architect’s death. The initiative represents a new chapter in the research dedicated to the figure of Sottsass, a project developed for several years by Triennale Milano in collaboration with Studio Sottsass. The exhibition brings together about 1,200 images, in black and white and color, documenting moments of daily life, travel and professional activities. The photographs depict places, people and architecture, moving between public and private spaces without obvious distinctions between the two dimensions. Among the locations immortalized are Milan, Filicudi, the United States, French Polynesia, India, Iran and Syria.
“Always, almost every day, from 1976 to 2007, Ettore and Barbara made their encounter a story,” says Stefano Boeri, President of Triennale Milano. “A sequence of images, intimate, private - yet destined sooner or later to become the public narrative of an exposed, living, total love. The web of life that these hundreds of photos tell has been resting for years in the folders (with annuals as labels) that Barbara Radice keeps in her apartment, in the heart of Milan. Today that Triennale has freed them and exhibited them, these photographs once again become the almanac of an intense love, which perhaps daily amazed its own protagonists, to the point of prompting them to amaze the world with their love.”
“The exhibition,” argues Marco Sammicheli, Director of the Museum of Italian Design, “was born as a kaleidoscope where emotions, public life, private life and photography merge giving life to a story that kneads emotions, landscapes and monuments. Places, people, architectures and moments of life become, at the same time, protagonists and background of a narrative that spans the existence of a great master of architecture and design like Ettore Sottsass.”
The title of the exhibition, Mise en scène, recalls Sottsass’s concept that life resembles a stage performance, similar to a Commedia dell’Arte, where every gesture and encounter unfolds as an improvised sequence of events, following a more or less defined plot.
In conjunction with the exhibition, a book edited by Dario Cimorelli is being published, with texts in Italian and English by Stefano Boeri, Barbara Radice, Christoph Radl and Micaela Sessa. The volume documents the images on display and explores the relationship between the architect’s private life and artistic production. The exhibition is supported by institutional partners Deloitte and Fondazione Deloitte, Lavazza Group and Salone del Mobile.Milano, confirming Triennale Milano’s collaboration with private and institutional entities to promote cultural initiatives related to design and architecture. The exhibition provides an opportunity for direct observation of the daily life of a master of design, highlighting the link between the personal sphere and the professional choices of one of the protagonists of contemporary Italian architecture.
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| Ettore Sottsass. Mise en scène: at Triennale Milano with 1,200 photographs. |
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