Among the architecture that still stands out in the center of Predazzo for its rigor and sobriety are some of the buildings designed by architect Ettore Sottsass. If you are thinking of the internationally renowned genius designer who practically “designed the 1980s” attracting the attention of the most important collectors and inspiring the world’s leading designers, I’ll let you in on a “secret” right away: that was his son. “Our” was Sottsass Sr.
Ettore Sottsass Senior was born in Nave San Rocco, in the province of Trento, when the town was still under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on April 12, 1892. He then attended popular schools in Cavalese, Predazzo and Lana. From 1906 he studied at the School of Arts and Crafts and after attending the civil construction course at the Werkmeisterschule, Baugewerbliche Richtung, in Innsbruck for two and a half years (1909-12), he settled in Vienna for a couple of years; here he attended the special architecture course at the Kunstgewerbeschule, directed by architect Friedrich Ohmann, and in an atmosphere of lively debate, he met several architects whom he later found again in his professional career, including Umberto Cuzzi, Giuseppe Gyra and Giuseppe Pagano.
Because of the call to arms he was unable to finish his studies, but Ohmann nevertheless awarded him a diploma for merit in 1918. During World War I he was drafted into the Kaiserjäger, and was sent to Innsbruck to take the officers’ course, where he met his future wife, Antonia Peintner, whom he married in Cembra and with whom, a year later, he had his only son, Hector Junior.
At the conclusion of the conflict he returned to the Trentino that had become Italian and participated in numerous competitions held by public administrations for postwar reconstruction and for the creation of monuments to honor the fallen. He joined the Tridentine Artistic Circle and exhibited, between 1922 and 1928, in several editions of the Venice Tridentine Art Exhibition, becoming an interpreter of an architectural renewal within tradition.
Casa di riposo San Gaetano
In 1920 he submitted four projects to the competition of the Consortium of the Province and Municipalities, two of which were awarded prizes. In the early 1920s he also designed his first two buildings in Trent (1922-23): the Public Employment Building Consortium on Via Pilati and the Giovanni Prati Cooperative building on Via dei Mille, where he introduced a formal and decorative repertoire typical of this early design season of his, tending to blend modern aspects and motifs of Ladino tradition.
In 1924 he won a competition for the design, entitled Rimembranze, of the rest home in Predazzo in Val di Fiemme (1923-27). But this was not his first project completed in Predazzo: in fact, his are also the design of the Railway Station, terminus of the Val di Fiemme Railway, built in the early 1920s, the Dellagiacoma Workshop, and the Elementary School, designed in collaboration with his son “Junior” around 1950. Here the architect’s maturity emerges amply through the correct orientation of the building and the careful distribution of spaces harmoniously enhanced by the colonnade that is distributed over the three bodies of the building. The foundation stone of the school was laid on July 25, 1951, the feast day of the patron saint, St. James, thus auguring the successful completion of the work and the protection of the structure that was in fact inaugurated in 1953. In October of the same year, Sottsass Senior died in Turin, where he had moved with his family in the late 1920s.
Stazione Ferroviaria
Scuola elementare
Officina Dellagiacoma