The totemic Carlton, which Sottsass created in 1981, is his most identifiable furniture design. It reads as a bookcase, a room divider and a dresser, depending on who you ask. Its form is ambiguous enough to question, at first glance, whether it's a piece of furniture at all.

The Carlton is constructed of medium density fibreboard (MDF) sections, which are laminated in different colours. It features a stack of horizontal, perpendicular and angled surfaces and has two red drawers just above the base.

The Carlton's seemingly haphazard arrangement of partitions and voids is actually based on a logical system of equilateral triangles, which support both the slanted and flat shelves.