M: In the introduction of the book Ettore Sottsass, explains how USA and USS designed their spaceships, following the same needs but solving it in different ways. Do you think this idea could be applied to chairs? Can we have the same need but solve it culturally in different ways?
U: With this example, Sottssas wanted to underline the importance of the value that has been given to the spaceship at the time. When the Americans designed the spaceship they already knew that it was going to be shown on every TV in the country, so it would have needed a specific style that has to be similar to the movie that was released the year before where they were using white suits. This is also proved by the collaboration of Raymond Lewy the American designer with several projects in collaboration with NASA. So what Sottsass is saying is that the USA wanted to show all their leadership and URSS instead was much more focused on the military aspect, showing sturdiness, engineering essentiality, just like a flying tank. So in this case, not everything is left to the randomness of evolution, but there were really specific values that were being applied to these objects.
