Catalonia

Ettore Sottsass. Designer. Innsbruck, Austria, 1917 - Milan 2007

 

Catalonia is a beautiful place, wild, ancient. For one thing, there is her sea; for another, her mountains, her rocks, her terrible beauty; in between there are the deserts, olive and fruit trees and great slow-flowing rivers. / The Catalans too are forest-like, ancient, a little dark; and their language, hard, with its sometimes lugubrious sounds. / In Barcelona, the intellectuals - those that I know, but also others that I do not know, confront darkness face to face: the darkness of place, the darkness of history, the darkness of the future, the darkness of destiny, of solitude. / The Catalan intellectuals that I know have not yet taken to “use and throw away” techniques, the dynamics of consumerism, the dynamics of fashion “collections”; the Catalans seek the high ground of existence, the high ground of design. / For a true Catalan architect a wall is a wall, a door is a door, a window a window, weight is weight and thickness thickness, a patio is a patio, a shade is a shade, a ray of sunlight is still  a ray of sunlight. / I met Oscar Tusquets many, many years ago and I have often thought and continue to think that he is a true, very special Catalan architect who personifies the permanent tension of Catalan culture: that culture that strives to achieve a heightened view of existence.