Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007) spent his career asking the question, What does an object mean to the person who lives with it? His answers, funny yet philosophical, came in the form of objects: in 1968, the Valentine typewriter for Olivetti, red and portable and deliberately anti-corporate; in 1981, the Carlton bookshelf for the Memphis Group, a totemic explosion of laminate and color that had no real precedent in furniture design. In the early 1970s, in a move that puzzled his professional circle, Sottsass walked away from his Milan practice and spent time wandering the land of Catalonia, taking pictures and writing, working out what design was actually for. The first major Sottsass retrospective in Japan draws on a collection of over 100 works—furniture, ceramics, and drawings. —Elena Clavarino