Design Magazine Vol.237 on Sale July1！

AXIS Inc (Minato-ku, Tokyo; President and Representative Director: Mitsuhira Shimazaki) has released  Design Magazine AXIS (vol. 237) published on July 1, 2026.

COVER STORY

Martin Margiela (Artist)

The unexpected is crucial for me and also very exciting.
Evidence annoys me.

Martin Margiela has always been creating. Born into a barber's household, he began making clothes for his Barbie dolls at a young age and entered art school in his teens. After learning a wide range of techniques essential to creation, he founded Maison Martin Margiela in 1988, where he deconstructed fashion and went on to rewrite the rules of the language of mode. After stepping away from the fashion world in 2008, even throughout what appeared to be more than a decade of silence, Margiela did not present any work; instead, he is said to have spent his days and nights secluded in his atelier, wholly absorbed in making art. Now, he is drawing a line under his story as a designer and moving into a new chapter as an artist.

Feature
Ettore Sottsass: The Aesthetics of Deviation

From innovative industrial products to the bold furniture of Memphis, and from architecture to drawings, Ettore Sottsass was a designer and architect who left an indelible mark on late 20th-century design. For him, design was not merely about creating "objects"; it was the very act of shaping how humans live and perceive the world. By reintegrating symbolism, playfulness, and a sense akin to prayer into his work, his practice continues to challenge us today with the fundamental question: "What are we truly designing?" This feature traces the endless scope of his enduring legacy. 

When I Was Very Small, 1973
Text by Ettore Sottsass

In the early 1970s, sensing the limits of corporate design and functionalism, Ettore Sottsass began to consider whether the core of the design he was pursuing might lie in "primordial memories" that could not be contained by rationality or functionality, and set down his childhood memories in fragmentary words. South Tyrol, where he spent his childhood, was a region where Italian and German cultures intersected. What did his young self feel in "a world that did not belong to a single culture"?

From rationalism to sensibility
Tracing the evolution of Sottsass's thought

The portable typewriter Valentine, which radically transformed the very idea of the typewriter, was designed by Ettore Sottsass in Italy in the late 1960s around the concept of a tool users would grow attached to and want to carry with them. His thinking, which began with an early interest in rationalist design, gradually came to move between functionality and symbolism, before eventually shifting toward intense color and bold forms. Taking as its guide a conversation with Nagisa Sugimoto, curator at the Artizon Museum and organizer of the current exhibition Ettore Sottsass: Design begins where magic begins, this article traces the evolution of Sottsass's thought. 

A REFLECTIVE CONVERSATION：Michele De Lucchi and Alberto Alessi
Ettore Sottsass: Learning from freedom

Ettore Sottsass, a maestro of 20th-century design. Through the voices of Michele De Lucchi, who spent deeply influential years alongside him in Memphis, and Alberto Alessi, who collaborated with him on many products at Alessi, we gain a glimpse into the man behind the legend. We hear more about imitating Sottsass, an invitation to travel, a sense of unease toward postmodernism, and the cultural responsibility of companies. From the memories of the two men emerges the image of a mentor who inspired the future not only through his works, but through the way he lived.

Extraordinary foundations of a designer
Naoto Fukasawa on Ettore Sottsass

Naoto Fukasawa once had the opportunity to present his own design philosophy directly to Sottsass. At first glance, Sottsass's vibrant colors and energetic forms appear to stand at the opposite pole from Fukasawa's own design sensibility. Yet Fukasawa speaks of him with profound admiration.

Reading Sottsass Again
Naoki Sato, Tatsuhiro Sekisaka, Olimpia Zagnoli, ULTRA STUDIO , Yuko Oshima, Bethan Laura Wood, Rio Kobayashi, Kazuhisa Horikiri

How do Ettore Sottsass's works, activities, and underlying philosophy resonate into today's design? We examined the insights of various individuals connected to Sottsass ――including a gallerist handling Memphis Milano works, a design coordinator living in a Sottsass-designed house, leaders of local industries, as well as designers, architects, and illustrators who say they were deeply influenced by him. A diverse portrait of Sottsass emerges through these varied perspectives.

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