You know a work from the Memphis Group when you see it. Boldly colourful and geometric, often with loud graphic patterns and a jagged playfulness that almost belies function, the furniture and homeware from this group of creatives would go on to all but define the interior style of the 1980s. Its aesthetic seeped into fashion, film, music and architecture, becoming the visual shorthand for a maximalist era that eschewed and subverted the politeness of modernism and grabbed the future with both hands.

The Memphis Design Group story

The group started with Italian designer Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007), who remains perhaps the best-known arbiter of the style. In his Milan apartment in December 1980, a gathering of restless creatives catalysed into a movement, intent on provocation and experimentation. Their name, Memphis, made reference both to the American city – a centre of blues, soul and rock and roll – and ancient Egypt’s first capital, reflecting the group’s desire to blend diverse cultural and historic references (it was also reportedly inspired by a Bob Dylan song playing that evening, ‘Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again’).

Alongside Sottsass, the group’s founders included designers Martine Bedin, Aldo Cibic, Michele De Lucchi, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Matteo Thun and George J. Sowden – with international designers including Peter Shire, Masanori Umeda and Michael Graves joining later. Their first major show, bringing together furniture, lamps and ceramics, took place at the 1981 Salone del Mobile in Milan. Introducing the postmodern Memphis style to the world with a bang, the exhibition had immediate influence. Even though reception was divided, with critics loving or loathing it, the movement soon grew.

A new radical design voice

Memphis was radical not just in its aesthetic, but also its choice of materials. Works often turned to plastic laminate, a low-priced material more commonly associated with kitchen worktops. But cheap plastics were combined with hardwood, lacquer and brass, reflecting the Memphis predilection for mixing high and low, precious and tacky – and reframing traditional value concepts in the process.

Memphis designs drew on a wide-ranging mix of cultural and geographical references – indeed a lot are named after places, from Du Pasquier’s Arizona rug to Sottsass’s Tahiti lamp and Shire’s Brazil desk, perhaps reflecting the growing trend of globalisation that was shaping the 1980s.

Arguably the most iconic of the Memphis works is the Carlton bookcase by Ettore Sottsass, expressing multiple aspects of the style. The irreverent piece is a riot of colours – green, yellow, blue, red, pink – in laminate-covered wood forms, sitting on a base decorated with Sottsass’s wiggling, black-and-white ‘Bacterio’ pattern (also used for his popular Tahiti lamp). While an overtly geometric assemblage, the bold and somewhat impractical diagonals nonetheless eschew the rectilinear grids of modernism, and work to almost anthropomorphise the bookcase. Its sculptural presence and large size meant it could double as a room divider, and the Carlton has arguably become the statement furniture piece of every room it’s placed in.

After Sottsass: an aesthetic revolution and the end of Memphis

In 1985, Sottsass decided to leave the group behind to focus on architecture. Barbara Radice, Memphis’s artistic director, described how that year signalled an aesthetic evolution for the group, where colours got darker and references moodier, evoking ‘smoke-filled urban atmospheres, the streets of Blade Runner or a post-nuclear hero roaming scorched landscapes.’

Only a couple of years later, the movement effectively disbanded. During its existence, the group’s most significant collectors included fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld – who furnished his entire Monte Carlo apartment with Memphis works, and called the style the ‘Art Deco of the ’80s’ – and musician David Bowie. For Bowie, Memphis ‘sucked on the breath of pop culture with gusto and an enthusiasm that was delightful to witness.’

These days, avid collectors span the globe and different industries – though Memphis continued to have its detractors over the years (the late Sir Terence Conran called it ‘joke junk’). While the Memphis style was swept away to make room for futuristic minimalism in the late 1990s, the group’s works saw a revival in the late 2010s, leading up landmark exhibitions celebrating its 40th anniversary (at MK Gallery and Vitra Design Museum). Memphis Milano still produces many of the iconic designs, enabling the movement and its inventive, provocative, playful and joyous pieces to live on through interiors far and wide.

The Memphis designs to know (and own)

For our 2024 horoscope, we asked Italian astrologist Lumpa for a detailed reading of each star sign's fortunes, and the design objects that identify them:

Lumpa: Happy 2024 everyone! Before proceeding to the annual destinies of the individual signs, I’d like to say something about the year ahead. 2024 is a leap year, and 29 February will be a day full of lucky surprises for some (and unlucky for others). It is a year marked by the transit of Saturn in the sign of Pisces, like in 1994, 1995 and 1996, so it will be easy to notice similarities with those years. So if you were born with Saturn in Pisces, or in the years mentioned above (but also between 1964 and 1966), watch out, as you might easily enter into crisis.

Unlike 2023, which was a very slow year, 2024 will seem to pass very quickly, because Mars and Venus will not retrograde (well, at least until December, let's say). It is a condition that can result in new love, and that makes couples thrive.

It will also be a Chinese Year of the Dragon, which according to tradition should bring rain after periods of drought (and possibly more children).

Wallpaper* 2024 horoscope by Lumpa

Aries

Even if early January is a bit annoying, a very important and beautiful year is about to begin for Aries. It could even be the first of a series, because future years will bring more growth. The year will be defined by a great life change and the beginning of a new cycle of luck. A wish is about to come true, in your emotional or professional life: you saw the first signs of it in 2023, even if that was still a tiring, stressful year. In 2024, you are going to consolidate a new step – it could be a new life, a new career, an important family event, or something in your private sphere. Children are on the way for many Aries. Signs of improvement will be noticed as early as February and March, with a peak in the birthday season. One of the happiest months will be August.

Design for Aries: Aries enjoy bold and colourful pieces – sometimes their choices can be playful or flashy. We picked a classic of Sottsass' Memphis era, a cacophony of colours and shapes. 

Taurus

Many Taureans will feel that just making it to 2024 is an achievement. Recent years have been difficult on many fronts: at work, as a couple, even in health. For many, self-esteem and personal power need to be recovered. The new year ushers in greater strength, physical health and even a bit of luck: the recovery begins. This is a year in which Jupiter will be in your sign and Saturn in your favour, a perfect condition for recovering energy. However, there are also changes to be made; in work, it is necessary to take a new direction and leave your comfort zone, something that is always a little difficult at first, but which will then succeed well. Overall, it is a good year for finances. Even in the area of affection, there is greater wellbeing – anyone looking for a partner, or just wanting someone alongside them, will find what they need.

Design for Taurus: When it comes to interior design, Taureans are big spenders. Always enjoying the most expensive pieces, their style is very classy and sober. Gio Ponti's classic designs feel like a natural fit for this discerning star sign. 

Gemini

2024 will be a memorable year for Geminis, mostly a lucky year, but not entirely easy to manage. Saturn in Pisces is in a critical position and the bearer of changes that are not always easy to implement. Saturn usually brings break-ups, at work and in love, and more generally, challenges personal growth. It is the planet that makes us age, as it brings mental heaviness. This year's events are somehow related to what happened in 2016/17, two critical years. However, there is also good news: the changes brought by Saturn can prove difficult to live with, but positive for your career, and indicate the moment in which you can make a real leap forward. Of course, nothing is free; it all depends on how serious and responsible you have been in recent years. What guarantees that things will go well is mostly the presence of Jupiter in Gemini, always a carrier of luck (and often new love). Those who have the courage to change will be rewarded.

Design for Gemini: Geminis discover new trends and embrace new concepts before everyone else: they fall in love with ideas and stories and their style is in constant evolution. Among the past year's design innovations that they would love is Samuel Ross' bathroom faucet evolution for Kohler. 

Cancer

The beginning of the year might not seem exciting, just as the arrival of the previous autumn was already stressful. 2024, however, is a lucky year, even very lucky for some Cancerians. Saturn and Jupiter are in favourable signs, indicating that there will be important positive news for feelings and finances. For many it is the beginning of a new life – perhaps they have changed jobs, cities, or have become parents (or are about to!), and sometimes the adjustment will be the cause of stress. There is some difficulty in January, and towards April and May. This is a very eventful year, in which there will be a lot of work and a lot of positive feedback. It will often be easy to lose patience, and the commitments will be many.

Design for Cancer: Cancerians love their homes; they're the couch potatoes of the zodiac and surround themselves with cosy and comfortable pieces. We've been eyeing this collaboration between Italian mill Lanerossi and Milan Triennale, resulting in a series of blankets that are a perfect mix of craft, culture and comfort. 

Leo

Leos will find that the future is easier to manage compared to the past couple of years. People of this sign have matured a lot, thanks to complex events and situations that have undermined much of their proverbial personal security. 2024 brings a comeback, but there are still issues to settle, and unexpected events. There will be periods that are not easy to manage, such as February/March and July/August, defined by great impatience. As soon as you understand what is limiting your freedom and find a way to resolve it (perhaps by changing your home, job, or partner), everything will be resolved. Some problems could come from someone you consider a friend, and I recommend you be careful not to take the trust you place in others for granted, because there is the risk of feeling betrayed and disappointed.

Design for Leo: Leos love to show off. They are allergic to mediocrity and choose objects and furniture that express their sense of grandeur. One of modern design's most impressive pieces, the Albero bookcase is both ingenious and sophisticated. 

Virgo

2023 was a tough year for many Virgos. There might have been physical tiredness, health problems, and a multitude of conflicts to manage. 2024 is less belligerent, less tiring, but nevertheless, there will still be things to manage. Saturn is in the sign of Pisces, therefore in opposition. There is a big change that must be faced to regain serenity. It is most likely to do with work, and Virgo is a sign that is always very slow to resign, tending to feel paralysed when faced with risks. The advice is not to wait until you are at your limit to abandon a suffocating situation. In other cases, problems may concern your love life; with Saturn opposite, we often break up. 2023 put relationships through a great stress test, so those who find themselves in a critical emotional situation are probably already aware of it. In 2024, there should be no bad surprises, only important issues to react to.

Design for Virgo: Virgos do a lot of thinking and rethinking before buying. They hate aesthetic arrogance and prefer a minimalist style. Their love for all things vintage made us pick this Ikea cabinet, timeless, modern and essential.  

Libra

I am optimistic for Librans in 2024. I have seen people of the sign mature a lot in recent times and become less self-centred, more aware and wise. There have been many changes in the relationships field, among partners and friends, resulting in a restyling of personal networks. In late 2023, Librans entered a new cycle of life; they have new goals, new allies and a newfound mental independence, and getting to this point wasn't easy (in many cases, relationships ended with suffering). 2024 is a carte blanche on which to begin reimagining your life. There will be new partnerships, in work, in love, and in the world of friendships. Rewriting your life requires great energy, first at the beginning of the year, and again in spring, times which will be intense. In short, 2024 will be a beautiful, but also tiring, year of construction, when important loves can blossom.

Design for Libra: Librans are known for their good taste in design, leaning towards sophisticated minimalism, and enjoy unique pieces known only to the few. They'd appreciate how special this chess set is, designed in 1950 by Carl Auböck and meticulously crafted by hand by the legend's descendants in their Vienna workshop. 

Scorpio

I am happy to be able to write a nice 2024 horoscope for Scorpios: you deserve it after some difficult years. The recent period has left you a little tired, from criticism and conflict at work, and disappointments in your love life. 2024 is the year when you feel more spirited, eager to show the world that difficulties stimulate you rather than take you down. There is a healthy desire to want more: more money, more love, more success – and you'll begin to see the results. The year begins well in January, with determination and planning, and generally continues well, but you will see cyclical setbacks in early March, early July, and even in August. These are useful in making you understand that to truly get more from life, you must also question parts of yourself that you didn't think you wanted to change. Pay attention when you feel impatient or suffocated – that’s when you will understand what you have to leave behind. Scorpios in their thirties must also pay attention to friendships: some people are not as good friends as they say they are.

Design for Scorpio: Scorpios love secrets and mysterious objects. Their taste can have an erotic touch, because they love to play with taboos. Fornasetti's expansive collection of ornate ceramics is their cup of tea, especially the designs at the more humorously kinky end of the spectrum. 

Sagittarius

2023 was a tiring year and Sagittarians will be hoping that 2024 helps them regain confidence. The year ahead will certainly be better, with less tiredness and fewer conflicts. However, Saturn is in a critical position, so there are still difficult issues to deal with. Saturn in Pisces brings a desire for solitude and, in some way, will dampen the enthusiasm and sociability of Sagittarians. It's a moment for introspection; trust this feeling and take advantage of it to look inside yourself. Other problems can come from the economic sphere; it would be better not to spend too much and to take good care of your accounts. At work, it is time to think about a change of direction and, for many, it will be easy to end professional relationships. Finally, the conditions in love are not the best and there could be crises, break-ups or, worse, the beginning of unhealthy relationships. A cycle that began around 2016 is about to end. March and April are the most difficult months.

Design for Sagittarius: Sagittarians don't think twice when it comes to buying, and they're heavy decorators. They enjoy dreamy objects with a history, and shy away from minimalism. We picked a Moroccan rug for them, a vintage piece featuring an abstract Berber design that is sure to be a showstopper in their home. 

Capricorn

2024 for Capricorns begins with great determination; there is a desire to do things and new projects are starting. A beautiful year begins with positive surprises and general growth; it's a good year for finances and for loved ones. The balance is very positive, but there will be moments of stress and tiredness. You seem committed to a new life project, and 2024 feels like a sort of year zero: everything will be under construction. A lucky event will surprise you towards the beginning of April, and its management will keep you very busy for the following two months. This will be trying on a physical level and will test your patience. As always, luck and prosperity never come free, and there will be a certain amount of effort to be made: it could be moving and even changing city. For others, there may be children on the way. Capricorn is not a sign that fears physical fatigue, but is more stressed when dealing with new things or doing something for the first time, in unknown territory. Arm yourself with patience: it will be a beautiful year.

Design for Capricorn: Extreme functionalism is key for Capricorns, who prefer old-school objects without ostentation. A contemporary turntable is the perfect match for them, utilitarian and nostalgic. 

Aquarius

Aquarians leave behind some difficult years, which have made them mature and acquire wisdom. From the birthday season, there will be a real restart. March and April will find you very busy, always at work. The second half of the year, from June, will be peaceful and bring some good news. There is the possibility of new loves, and those who find themselves in bad or unclear relationships will find the possibility of ‘jumping on a better train’, especially in June. Many understood what wasn't working in their lives in the summer of 2023, and 2024 is here to bring a turning point to that dissatisfaction. Aquarians are often slow to process changes, but this year, at a certain point, they will find an edge, greater confidence and therefore also the courage to assert themselves. Finances will also be positively affected by this change in attitude.

Design for Aquarius: Aquarians avoid the mainstream – they're the non-conformists of the zodiac. They enjoy concepts more than aesthetics and fall in love with designs with a twist – like these sunset lamps that add a mysterious glow to a room. 

Pisces

Everything that could have gone into crisis did so in 2023, a truly difficult year for Pisceans. There were conflicts, misunderstandings, physical exhaustion, and worry for yourself or others. 2024 will not reverse the situation 180 degrees, but it will be less trying on a psychophysical level. The problems that emerged in 2023 now need to be resolved. The first thing is to stop taking on other people's problems and emotions and put yourself first. Another important thing will be to ask for clarity and to always tell the truth; be transparent. You are in a period of personal growth, new developments in your career, and a general moment of maturation. However, none of this should be taken for granted, so the advice is to pay close attention to your mistakes, because they will not go unnoticed. The birthday season will be very important.

Design for Pisces: Pisceans have a particular sensitivity for beauty. They are very visual and imaginative, and feel the energy of spaces and objects. Sabine Marcelis' pastel resin and marble combo contributes to the soft atmosphere of their ideal interiors. 

When it comes to fashion’s most enduring figures, Karl Lagerfeld is undoubtedly top of the pile. Synonymous with style – his life encompassed roles at Chloé, Fendi, and, most famously, Chanel – the German designer has transcended the hallowed halls of Paris’ haute couture salons to become a true household name (with an equally enduring look to match). 

Now, a new Thames & Hudson-published tome, Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Houses (£75, available Waterstones) offers the reader a rare glimpse into a lesser-seen side of the designer’s life, charting the glamourous array of homes that Lagerfeld resided in across his career. Each one is constructed with the same meticulous attention to detail and liberated, eclectic eye for colour, print and design as his fashion collections (which could equally be inspired by the crinolines of Marie Antoinette as the vivid postmodern lines of Ettore Sottsass and the Memphis Group).

Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Houses

The wide-ranging, glossy tome – which features texts from authors Patrick Mauriès and Marie Kalt – steps inside Lagerfeld’s extraordinary portfolio of homes, from Paris to Biarritz, as well as residences in Rome and Hamburg. As expected, each features not only memorable design floruishes – a matching striped couch and wallpaper, surrounded by 19th-century portraits in his Roquebrune-cap-Martin home, adorns the cover – but also hundreds of precious objects which he collected on his travels.

The rooms no doubt also provided spaces for him to dream up his fashion collections, not least in his famous libraries, where the self-confessed bibliophile gathered thousands of books on floor-to-ceiling shelves (as at 8 rue des Saint-Pères in Paris) or scattered over tables. A single page in these was enough to spark a collection, which he would design via drawings that were then sent to the Fendi and Chanel ateliers to be fastidiously recreated. ‘I hate tourism. Travel for travelling?’ he told Wallpaper* when he guest-edited the October 2009 issue of Wallpaper*. ‘No thank you, my dear. I’d rather stay at home enchanted by my books.’ 

That said, architecture and interiors were a continuing fascination for the designer, who also sought inspiration from palaces, castles, apartments, galleries, city buildings and private residences around the world (some, he said, were only visited in the pages of his library). In the same issue of Wallpaper*, he noted that his tastes could change on a whim. In 2009, he was in the throws of a love affair with 18th-century interiors, having recently tired of Memphis. ‘Nobody else did a total house in Memphis. Nobody. I loved it, but you can't live with it for long,’ he said. ‘After a few years it was like living in old Courrèges. Ha! I'm a fashion person. I can’t spend the rest of my days living with the same old style.’

One of his favourite homes – which is photographed in the book – was a residence 51 rue de l’Université in Paris, where he lived for 30 years from 1977. This past fashion season, the extraordinary home hosted shows by Marni and Victoria Beckham, the first time the house has been used in this way. Just afterwards, it would play host to the first edition of Design Miami/Paris.

In the book, each of the homes is introduced by a short text by Marie Kalt that also catalogues the various objects each home contained. These span an apartment in Saint-Sulpice, Paris, inspired by art deco, an opulent 18th-century mansion, Hôtel Pozzo di Borgo (as the book notes, his friend and collaborator Amanda Harlech said he had a ‘Versailles complex’), an apartment in Monte Carlo, a French countryside pile, and ’Nordic villa’ in his native city of Hamburg. 

Together, it provides a satisfying look through the keyhole of one of fashion’s most influential names, alongside continuing clues about the oftentimes enigmatic figure’s aesthetic fixations, and unconventional – but impossibly glamourous – life at home.

Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Houses, with text by Patrick Mauriès and Marie Kalt, is available 7 December 2023 from Waterstones and Barnes & Noble

thamesandhudson.com

Tom Lee Park unfolds along the east bank of the Mighty Mississippi. Set to open officially on Labor Day 2023, this is an important, new, green space for downtown Memphis, as well as a place where nature and the city meet. Its creators, Chicago based Studio Gang (the project’s masterplanner and architect) and New York’s Scape (who acted as landscape architect and park designer), describe the old site as a ‘working waterfront’, a previously flat, inhospitable, landfill part of town used for anything between parking lot, dump site, commercial transport route and industrial facility. The team, led by respective founders Jeanne Gang and Kate Orff (both featured in the Wallpaper* USA 300), was called upon by client Memphis River Parks Partnership to reimagine this stretch of the riverside as a centrepiece riverfront green, an urban lung and open space to be shared among Memphis residents.  

Tom Lee Park: the making

It was not an easy task. ‘Tom Lee Park is part of a much bigger plan for the city of Memphis,’ explains Gang. ‘The city was turning its back to the river, and we wanted to change that. It’s a very ambitious plan.’ The greater scheme involves a taskforce put together by city authorities in 2017 to transform some six miles of the riverfront into a network of public spaces; the park is just the first one of them to complete. It is surrounded by areas of very different use and character - from residential neighbourhoods to a mud island, an open air concert space, and a museum about the Mississippi. It sits on a bluff, with the water running just below it, so the team also had to negotiate potential flooding from what is North America’s largest river.

Thousands of Memphians were invited to participate in a series of consultation and public engagement activities to record the people’s needs, wishes and worries, in order to craft the space in the best way possible for its users. This project had to be as sustainable and resilient as possible as a key priority, in order to carve a strong sense of community in it. The design was further informed by the Youth Design Leadership program, which embedded local teens in the design process (in partnership with local nonprofit KnowledgeQuest). 

The designers worked to add texture and articulation to the site, by creating sequences of open lawns and more enclosed garden sections, bringing grading and physical dynamism through form and an undulating terrain. Gang explains that they studied the aerial shape of the Mississippi, looking at its natural, winding body, and used it as a reference point for their design. Then, they began to overlay activities - from playgrounds to sheltered resting spots, and multi-use areas for sports and performances. Public amenities now include fitness stations; a playground created together with Denmark-based specialists, Monstrum; two passively cooled structures for food, drink and restroom facilities; and the park’s signature Sunset Canopy, a flexible shelter defined by a 2O,OOO sq ft floating timber roof placed upon a series of six steel ‘quadpods’ - their shape and arrangement, a nod to the historic site’s traditional cranes. Everything is made predominantly of wood (with some steel elements, due to the area’s earthquake prone nature), in particular simple logs. It included a few firsts for Gang, such as the studio’s first battered construction of its type and scape, and its largest ever canopy. 

Additionally, hundreds of new trees were planted, ensuring the new park ‘replenishes soils to nurture native plantings that attract pollinators, enhance biodiversity and support the Mississippi River Flyway.’ The design hopes to bring back ‘wonder and wildness’ to this part of Memphis, and aims to share it with everyone. Orff explains that to this end, they developed a curriculum on citizen science that can be downloaded by Memphis teachers and used in high schools to promote education around nature and healthy cities. 

‘My design process for the park was to pair dynamic Mississippi River land/water forms with public programs that we heard from our community outreach,’ says Orff. ‘So you’ll see jogging paths through some immersive “riffle” gardens, a playground in a raised area or “batture” and micro deltas bursting with native plants that welcome visitors to the many park entrances. SCAPE’s first encounter with the site was on a hot muggy afternoon. It was flat, with highly compacted soils, a few struggling trees and very exposed to sun and wind. SCAPE’s park design shapes a series of smaller community spaces and diverse landscapes along its 30 acres that feel like one holistic composition.’

Importantly, the park commemorates the life and actions of local resident Tom Lee, who in 1925 rescued 32 passengers from a capsized steamer ship crossing the river. Artist Theaster Gates is set to unveil a new artwork dedicated to Lee, titled ‘A Monument to Listening,’ upon the park’s official launch, adding another significant layer of creativity to the project. 

‘Memphis is one of the biggest cities on the Mississippi River and it has incredible grit, culture and character,’ says Orff. ‘Tom Lee Park is special because it creates an expansive, lush destination park along the riverbank - how many cities have that? Even more importantly, the park celebrates the legacy of Mr. Tom Lee, a hero who risked his own life to rescue over 30 people from the dangerous swirling river waters after a boat capsized. We were lucky enough to meet Tom Lee’s descendants and understand how they wanted his legacy to be honoured in the park. It keeps his story alive. It reminds us to try to find the “Tom Lee” in ourselves.’`Gang concludes: ‘We really want this to be a front yard for the people of Memphis. A place for everyone.’ 

studiogang.com

scapestudio.com

tomleepark.org 

This article appears in the August 2023 ‘Made in America’ issue of Wallpaper*, on sale 6 July, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Memphis is a city that shows its scars. This once vibrant Tennessee hub fell on hard times, following the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King here in 1968 and the subsequent unrest. A mass exodus of businesses hollowed out the heart of its downtown, where for decades, haunting sweeps of the city became a ghost town. But time is gradually healing the wounds and it's the revival of Memphis’ neglected buildings that’s proving particularly therapeutic. Derelict shells are being reimagined as cultural and community cores. A historically significant church is rising from the ashes as a pivotal civil rights site. And this Memphis architecture renaissance is attracting world famous names to the table, including Herzog & de Meuron and Studio Gang. This iconic music city is finally singing a new song, or at least adding some new riffs to its storied landscape. 

New and upcoming Memphis architecture

Memphis Brooks Art Museum, by Herzog & de Meuron and Archimania 

Offering a serious boost to Memphis’ regeneration efforts, Herzog & de Meuron and Memphis-based architects Archimania have unveiled their vision for the city’s new art complex, located in the downtown area overlooking the Mississippi River. Due to open in 2026, the structure will include a 175-seat glass box theatre overlooking a wooden-clad courtyard, exhibition spaces on the upper floor and a roof deck offering panoramic views of Memphis.

Tom Lee Park, Studio Gang and Scape

Forming part of a larger regeneration of six miles of its waterfront, Tom Lee Park will transform a largely barren strip of land into a network of community spaces for year-round use, with an adventure park, kinetic boardwalk and river-edge pavilions, due to open in 2023. The park also commemorates Tom Lee, an African American man who rescued 32 people from drowning, and aims to create a historic walking loop with the nearby National Civil Rights Museum. 

Historic Clayborn Temple, by Self + Tucker

As a rallying point for the sanitation workers’ strike of 1968, this Romanesque Revival church played a crucial role in the civil rights movement but was later left vacant for a decade. Its rehabilitation is spearheaded by local architects Self + Tucker, who are major players in Memphis’ revival, alongside cultural strategist Anasa Troutman. She says: ‘Memphis could be a pilot for the future of America. There’s an opportunity here to get race and class right, so we all have communities that feel joyful and abundant.’ Work is currently underway to transform Historic Clayborn Temple into a community space and a key site on the civil rights trail, opening 2024. 

Crosstown Concourse, Looney Ricks Kiss in association with Dialog

This former Sears distribution centre sat abandoned for 20 years, narrowly missing a visit from the wrecking ball. Its saviour was a tenacious local historian named Todd Richardson, who championed its metamorphosis into Crosstown Concourse: an ambitious 1.3-million-sq-ft vertical urban village deeply rooted in the arts, education and healthcare. ‘Everyone thought it was impossible,’ says Tony Pellicciotti, architect and principal at Looney Ricks Kiss (LRK), who recalls site visits involving wading through knee-high stagnant water. ‘But Memphis is an entrepreneurial, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps kind of place, so happen it did.’

Carbon Neutral Corridors, by Archimania

Ticking both the zero-carbon and zero-energy boxes, this high-performance build took two unloved, corporate offices in the residential Cooper Young district and upcycled them into a mixed-use micro village. Using a combination of solar panels and a geothermal system in the ground, the project now generates seven per cent more energy than it consumes. ‘This is a model for how to take an existing site that’s very ordinary, and make it extraordinary,’ says Archimania’s senior associate Jacob Davis, who hopes that this radical recycling of existing buildings will be rolled out throughout the US. 

Orange Mound Tower

This abandoned United Equipment tower rises above the Orange Mound skyline: the first neighbourhood in the US built solely by and for African Americans. Taking on the herculean task of revitalizing the derelict concrete tower into a beacon of hope, artist Victoria Jones and music producer James Dukes purchased the site to transform it into a mixed-use development, including a creative incubator featuring galleries and performance spaces. With the development expected to contain 100,000 sq ft of space, Looney Ricks Kiss and Aaron Patrick Architects have completed the master plan. Jones and Dukes are currently seeking a lead architect to bring their vision to life, with construction planned for 2023. 

Central Station Hotel, by Bounds & Gillespie Architects in association with Looney Ricks Kiss 

Memphis’ South Main Arts District is an area on the up, bolstered by the 2019 opening of Central Station Hotel in a renovated train station. Completion was no small feat, with the project needing to preserve the character of the 105-year-old building and incorporate a still functioning Amtrak ticket office, alongside operating as a hotel, restaurant and bustling lobby bar. The thread that weaves throughout is Memphis’ legendary music scene, from the high-tech EgglestonWorks listening lounge to the original train platform, reborn as a stage for local bands. 

INFORMATION

herzogdemeuron.com

archimania.com

studiogang.com

scapestudio.com

selftucker.com

lrk.com

dialogdesign.ca

aaronpatrickarchitects.com

bgktarchitects.com

When the Memphis Group presented its first collection at Milan’s Arc’74 Gallery in September 1981, a new design dialogue, one revelling in bold colour, postmodern pizzazz and plastic, and rejecting, functionality, industrialism and the notions of good taste, was born. As 2021 marks the 40th anniversary of the group, founded by Ettore Sottsass and boasting renowned members, including Nathalie Du Pasquier, George Sowden and Shiro Kuramata, a host of institutions are celebrating its signature designs, from Sottsass' 1981 Carlton room divider, to Peter Shire's 1982 Bel-Air armchair.

Memphis: 40 Years of Kitsch and Elegance at Vitra Design Museum Gallery kicked off in Feburary 2021, and this week, from May 19-23 June, Saint Laurent is celebrating the prismatic spirit of the Memphis Group across its Rive Droite concept stores in Paris and Los Angeles. The brand's French outpost opened in autumn 2019, as a way to evolve Saint Laurent's universe, with eclectic lifestyle pieces to purchase, from brand merchandise to Baccarat glassware, and exhibitions covering art, design and music. These range from a show of African sculptures from Galerie Lucas Ratton to showcases of Helmut Lang's large-scale totemic artworks.

Saint Laurent's store exhibitions celebrate pieces close to the heart of its artistic director Anthony Vaccarello and include Masanori Umeda's Tawaraya Ring (1981), a living room piece also beloved by Karl Lagerfeld, who furnished his Monaco apartment with Memphis Group designs in 1983, which was shot for the now shuttered Hamburg-based magazine Mode Und Women. An auction of Lagerfeld's collection was sold by Sotheby's in 1991.

In celebration of the Memphis Group milestone, Vaccarello has also designed a capsule collection revelling in its idisyncratic bold prints and patterns. This offering features checkerboard hoodies and colour-blocked high-top sneakers, spliced with animal prints, pinks and oranges. A rare selection of Memphis monographs are also available to purchase, perfect for bibliophiles also entranced by the bolder things in life.

INFORMATION

ysl.com

Chinese architecture studio PIG Design has created a prismatic exhibition space in the city of Hangzhou, dedicated to the Memphis Group. Titled ‘Ya Space!', the private gallery draws on references to the celebrated design group of the 1980s, even through its name – ‘Ya' means ‘cliff' in Chinese, and ‘cliff city' is the Chinese knickname for the US city of Memphis. 

PIG founder Li Wenqiang led the design, which echoes the Memphis ethos of ‘unrestricted creative exploration'. Following this approach, the space, specialising in showing Memphis Group furniture, adopts unusual forms, both inside and out, bright colours and ‘a design style liberated from minimalism and pragmatism', explains Li. 

The crystal fragment-like exterior is made of stainless steel panels, arranged in an angular formation. The idea was to make abstract reference a ‘cliff', while attracting attention. Meanwhile, the entrance, an eye-catching circular hole cut out of the front façade on ground level, is further highlighted by a large graphic exclamation point on the round glass door. 

The interior spans two floors. The ground level is a composition of large-scale volumes in various geometric shapes, intended as a fun, experiential destination and an invitation for the visitor to explore. Bespoke light boxes, hanging from the ceiling, add to the dramatic and theatrical experience.

Orientating vistas within this playful internal landscape was important for Li. ‘Every structure is a visual point, and a geometrically cut view frame,' he explains. The upper floor is a large, flexible exhibition area, hosting a selection of the gallery's Memphis furniture for sale.

In Seoul, apartments with views of the Han River are, not surprisingly, prized commodities. Rarer still are those that open in the direction of two compass points. For locally based studio intg, this 112 sq m bolthole – on the 11th storey of a 30 storey apartment building that sits diagonally to the river in the city’s Gangnam quarter – was a boon.

Designers and intg co-founders, Daniel Song and Kate Cho say the views are ‘quite amazing – from the living room and bedroom, you see the river park, and from the office, you see the mountains with Namsan Tower, a major Seoul landmark, across the river.’

The east-west perspective had a direct impact on the design approach. ‘Since there is all-day natural lighting, we were able to be bold and use saturated colours and dark tones. And since the sunlight shifts throughout the day, we allowed the living room to be white so that it becomes a canvas.’  

The relatively long and narrow layout of the three bedroom apartment, especially along the axis from the entrance to the living area, required a horizontal layering of textures and colours – not least Lasvit pendant lamps, Arflex chairs and BD Barcelona Design accessories – to create distinct and separate visual zones. As Song puts it, the decision was to ‘add, rather than subtract or relocate.’

The result is an artful blend of Memphis and neo-deco. For the most part, the floor is white washed oak, while the atelier and library are sheathed in green marble, and walls are clad in mint and purple fabric panels. The bijou kitchen, meanwhile, features a brushed stainless steel counter and copper cabinets, alongside custom millworks in walnut and anodized metal.

For Song and Cho, the Seoul apartment is a useful shorthand for the DNA of their three year old studio which is currently working on the Seoul HQ of the Aju Hotels & Resorts group, and a VIP lounge for the Lotte department store. ‘The apartment’s design narrative comes from its existing condition and purpose. We had to create a visually inspiring, yet comfortable and embracing space.’ Mission accomplished, we say.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the intg website

The exuberant and influential Italian architect and designer Alessandro Mendini has died aged 87. The definition of a renaissance man, he not only produced architecture, graphics, furniture, interiors and paintings, but was editor-in-chief of Domus magazine from 1980 to 1985, and in 1976, co-founded Studio Alchimia with Ettore Sottsass.

Although he was known best for his playful and witty postmodern creations, such as the flamboyant 1978 Proust armchair for Cappellini, Alessi Anna G corkscrew, and the 1994 Groninger Museum in the Netherlands with its bright yellow tower, he was still working up until his death at Atelier Mendini in Milan, alongside his younger brother Francesco.

Born in 1931, Mendini graduated from the Politecnico di Milano in 1959 with a degree in architecture and worked from 1956 until 1970 as a partner with architect Marcello Nizzoli at his industrial design studio Nizzoli Associati.

It was during his 40s, as one of the key protagonists of the Radical Design movement, that he first found his groove, challenging design conventions, arguing for active and critical engagement and creating fun, colourful pieces. One of his notorious stunts during this period was to set two identical chairs on fire just outside the Casabella office. By burning the chairs, each of which bore the name ‘Lassù’ (up there), his avowed intention was to blur the line between art and design.

It was during this time, too, that Mendini carved out a reputation as one of the world’s leading design critics and architectural theorists, contributing extensively to the critical analysis of postmodern design. He began his 15-year career in publishing as managing editor of Casabella magazine from 1970 until 1976, then served as a founder and managing editor of his own magazine, Mode, from 1977 until 1981, and then, as mentioned, as editor of Domus magazine from 1980 until 1985.

In 1976, Mendini co-founded Studio Alchimia with Ettore Sottsass and Michele De Lucchi, rejecting modernist values and aesthetics in favour of decoration, humour and irony – and paving the way for the Memphis group, which Sottsass left Studio Alchimia to co-found.

The intertwining of art and design would prove to be a recurring theme in Mendini’s work. His 1978 Proust armchair, for example, combined a Baroque form with a pattern of multi-coloured fabric inspired by pointillist artist Paul Signac.

In 1983, Mendini began a long partnership with Alessi. His best-known, and arguably most divisive, design is the whimsical, anthropomorphic Anna G corkscrew, which he created for the Italian brand in 1994. Evoking the form of a smiling woman wearing a dress, it remains one of Alessi’s most recognisable products.

As an architect, Mendini’s buildings include the Alessi residence in Omegna, Italy; the Teatrino della Bicchieraia in Arezzo; a memorial tower in Hiroshima, Japan; and the Groninger Museum in The Netherlands. Of these, the latter, constructed between 1988 and 1994, is perhaps his masterpiece.

After founding Atelier Mendini in 1989, he remained very much in demand, collaborating with leading Italian product design companies and international brands. In 2010, Wallpaper* saluted his work with a design award for Best Cabinet, while in July 2016 he memorably transformed Le Corbusier’s historical Appartement N°50, within Marseille’s Unité d’Habitation.

Mendini was honoured during his lifetime with two Compasso d’Oro awards (in 1979 and 1981) as well as being named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in France and receiving a European Prize for Architecture Award in 2014. His humour, critical viewpoint and disruptive influence cannot be underestimated on several younger generations of architects and designers – Fabio Novembre expressed it perfectly, posting on Instagram: ‘A master, a father, a friend! I'll miss you!’

Since Chicago-based hospitality group Aparium launched in 2011, it’s been involved in opening some of the most interesting projects in the most unexpected American destinations like Detroit and Milwaukee. Its latest enterprise — the 11th in the portfolio — Hu. hotel has just opened in the city of Memphis, known for Blues music and barbecue.

Hu. hotel's home – in a Beaux Arts building from 1905 – provides the style foundation for Brooklyn-based designers HOME Studios, who layered local references (from the modernism prevalent in the city in the 1950s and 1960s to the neon signages you’d find outside Memphis bars) to create a truly textured look.

The lobby’s double-height ceiling, sheer, barely-there drapery, brass-trimmed sculptural chandelier, and low-slung leather chairs immediately deliver on this medley of inspirations. The 110 guest rooms follow suit but with a few more elevated touches like pink upholstery, Carrara marble, custom mix-media headboards, and framed photos of places around town. For aesthetes, there is plenty to look at (or post on Instagram) but the sharp design ethos means no corner ever feels cluttered or overdone.

A big part of Aparium’s MO is to weave in the local experience into the hotels they open. At Hu. (named after Hugh ‘Hu.' Lawson White Brinkley, a historic Memphis figure) this means a restaurant that evokes the iconic diners of the American South; an in-room cocktail – the Memphis Toddy – crafted by nearby Old Dominick Distillery, and, if you’ve really forgotten where you are, head up to the year-round rooftop, a spectacular perch from which to look at the city and the Mississippi River.

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

79 Madison Avenue

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‘A CD player can be put on random play. What if you had a design and a group of materials on random play, and all of them were coming out different? It would look like Memphis,’ muses Los Angeles artist Peter Shire in a new film, captured five days shy of his 70th birthday. The Memphis Group founding member is celebrated for his bright geometric teapots, sculptures, and furniture (as well as his sartorial penchant for stripes), with his off-kilter works dabbling on the right side of psychedelic kitsch. Directed by Harry Israelson and shot on Kodak Super 16mm, the nine-minute short Peter: on Fishing (watch below) takes us inside the artist’s Echo Park studio and home, where Shire opens up about what drove Memphis, our fear of colour, and the power of bad taste.

Shire was born in 1947 in Echo Park. His mother was a fourth-generation Californian and his father was a talented illustrator and carpenter. He yearned to be an artist from a young age, and later enrolled in the famed and now-defunct Chouinard Art Institute – although he was initially rejected from art school. ‘I am a maker of things, a hand-skills guy, so ceramics was my romantic vision. I wanted to be a potter wearing funky sandals and an apron,’ he told the Los Angeles Times in 2007.

In 1974, Shire made the two pieces – Auffen Gile and Gile Kilns – considered to be his first mature works in clay. These were sculptural, geometric interpretations of the traditional teapot, complete with ‘sun-bleached pastel glazes, uncanny angles, and a jumbled collage of parts’. Shire drew from the Bauhaus aesthetics, American craft, New Wave music, Space Age architecture, and Southern California ceramic artists like Peter Voulkos and Ken Price, his influences clearly steeped into his first teapot designs.

The artist’s early teapots caught the eye of Italian designer Ettore Sottsass, who was working in Los Angeles at the time. Sottsass found Shire’s teapots ‘fresh, witty, and full of information for the future’, and so Shire became the only American to join the Memphis design collective in Milan. There, Shire found a new creative outlet in furniture design, producing the iconic ‘Bel-Air’ chair (1984), among other bold pieces such as the ‘Peter sideboard’ (1987), ‘Peninsula’ table (1982), and ‘Hollywood’ coffee table (1983). ‘We were coming out of industrialism and entering into what is currently called the information age. I see Memphis and the approach to the pieces as a manual attempt at constructing things the way a computer could,’ says Shire.

Since the Memphis era, Shire has branched out into large-scale sculpture, works on paper, metalwork, and painting (on slabs of clay, of course). He has also completed commissions for public spaces and private buildings throughout Los Angeles, including colourful tile murals, while his work is included in a number of museum collections globally. Today, Shire works and lives with his wife in the modernist house that his parents built for themselves, not long after he was born.

We caught up with Israelson to find out more about his nostalgia-tinged film and dipping into Shire’s wonderland...

Wallpaper*: As a director, you work mainly on commercials as well as being known for your longtime collaboration with Toro y Moi. So how did you find yourself shooting a documentary on a Memphis Group artist?
Harry Israelson: Peter’s studio is actually on my street. I always walked past and never knew what was going on inside. Finally he hosted an open studio and we got to talking. After seeing him around the neighbourhood from time to time, I decided to ask if he was interested in making a film together.

W*: What was it like working with a larger than life character like Peter Shire?
HI: Peter is a very special person. Every machine, every toolbox, even his refrigerator, is airbrushed to fit within his bright colour palette. The entire world is curated and I found it to be incredibly inspiring. The very first thing we did was a three-hour audio interview; our conversation went all over the place, much in the way that his pieces are constructed, but somehow we always up ended back at an answer.

W*: Was your decision to shoot with Kodak Super 16mm a purely aesthetic one?
HI: Peter works across so many mediums; it felt appropriate to use a tactile medium such as film – something with texture, mirroring the paint and clay. I also like the limitations it provides. Shooting digitally means you can shoot endlessly. Film means you only have so much: here are the confines of your material now excel within those parameters. That thinking always fosters the best work for me.

W*: What were you trying to achieve with Peter: on Fishing?
HI: I wanted to make something that felt genuine, warm, and serious at the same time. The crew was small, just me and a few friends, and so the scale dictated the look, by way of necessity. There have been a lot of videos about Peter in the past but most offer a portrayal that is quite quirky, because the work is so playful; he’s a living legend whose contribution to American art is important.

W*: Tell us more about the music in the film. The title design, too, looks special...
HI: The score is by Jay Israelson, surprisingly of no relation (that I know of). Jay is a wonderful composer and pianist. The film needed to be romantic and so we pulled inspiration from impressionist composers like Debussy, Ravel, and Delius – even Gershwin and Bernstein had that same sentimental quality. The score features piano and synth because we thought it appropriate to fuse two styles – analogue and electronic – much in the way that Memphis fused styles. The titles are by designer Claire Hungerford, who created by hand her own version of Bodoni, a popular font in the Memphis movement.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit Peter Shire’s website and the Primary Colors website

Booking app HotelTonight are waving goodbye to the muted palette of hotel rooms with a playful hospitality project for New York Design Week. In a collaboration with Sight Unseen Offsite and Brooklyn-based design duo Hannah Bigeleisen and Steven Bukowski, they have realised a conceptual suite with vibrant contemporary interiors that are available to purchase via the HotelTonight app.

‘It doesn’t just feel like a single room with a single function’ explains Bukowski. The design team set out to challenge the idea of a hotel room as a place to repose for the night, turning it into a space that inspires creative thoughts, as seen through the primary palette, textured surfaces and bespoke artworks by Bigeleisen. ‘There’s a place to rest, a place to read, a place to sleep, and space to entertain,’ Bukowski continues.

The initiative aligns Sight Unseen’s ethos to support emerging talent with HotelTonight’s mission to promote boutique independent hotels. This interactive and accessible nature of the installation is further bought to life by allowing guests to purchase the mini bar, desk lamp and vanity mirror – all designed by Bukowski and Bigeleisen – in the same process as making a hotel reservation between 18-20 May.

The furniture inside the space (all originally created for the project) combines via a playful use of graphic prints and bold, architectural lines. These details draw inspiration from both Memphis and Op-art movements with a monochromatic striped pattern acting as as a motif across the room from the walls to the Bubble lounge bed (its streamlined wood frame also slides out with a niftily stealth drawer).

‘Too often, hotel rooms are sterile, with nondescript furniture that’s meant to be invisible rather than noticed. says Bigeleisen. ‘This space is the opposite, with wall treatments that augment the perception of the room and reinforce the linear elements of the furniture.’

See more from New York Design Week here

INFORMATION

New York Design Week is on until 23 May. For more information, visit the HotelTonight website

ADDRESS

201 Mulberry St
New York, NY 10012
USA

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‘I think it’s my inner child speaking,’ fine jeweller Sabine Getty explains of her love of bold, primary colours. ‘I love things that take me out of reality and into a happier world.’

It’s no wonder, then, that bright, cartoonish tones from the 1980s infiltrate both Getty’s work and home. The Memphis art movement has long inspired her, be it the zany, zig-zagging rows of diamonds on rings and the bright, waved bangles of her last collection, ‘Memphis’, or the designer’s acid-hued, Ettore Sotsass-filled apartment in Mayfair, London. Her new collection, BIG, follows suit, though this time pooling colour palettes and geometric playfulness from the Eighties film world – specifically the 1988 Tom Hanks hit of the same name.

‘I think the link I have to that decade is totally emotional,’ Getty explains. ‘It’s nostalgia for my childhood: the subconscious memory of growing up with colour and fun design such as the Memphis Group, and watching all the zany films of the time.’ The BIG collection riffs on games paraphernalia, such as dominoes, building blocks and children’s toys, in soft sweet-shop shades. A sugary pink sapphire encrusted doughnut ring hangs from a fine gold collar while elementary shapes – triangles, squares, oblongs – adorn fingers and ear lobes in blue and green sapphires.

But why Big? The film in which a miscalculated wish sees a 12-year-old boy wake up one morning as a 30-year-old man (Hanks), and whose speedy acquisition of an executive job as toy-tester for a world-famous company sets in motion a series of comic events. ‘It’s one of my all-time favourite movies. I think it resonated with kids everywhere and that’s why it’s such a cult hit… the idea of somehow being a kid that must play grown up. Dream and fantasy is so embedded into the movie’s reality that it totally blew my mind!’

An afternoon spent in the playroom with her daughter Gene inspired Getty to rethink her child’s bright wooden shapes, and imagine ‘a world of love, colour, innocence and childishness’. After all, who said life had to be all work and no play?

Sabine Getty in her new London studio/showroom, wearing a Courrèges top and skirt and Chanel boots. Furnishings include a ‘Kristall’ side table by Michele De Lucchi (left), a ‘Tahiti’ duck lamp by Ettore Sottsass (right) and a ‘Brazil’ desk by Peter Shire, all for Memphis. Originally featured in the September 2016 issue of Wallpaper* (W*210)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Sabine Getty website

Two radically different reference points seem to anchor the A/W 2017 women’s Valentino collection; restrained Victoriana co-mingles with the bold, poppy post-modernism of the Memphis Group, the Milan-based design collective, founded in 1981, that included among its members Ettore Sottsass, Andrea Branzi and Matteo Thun. According to Valentino’s creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli, this was less a study in contrasts than an exploration of common themes.

‘Both periods are characterised by a shift towards technological progress and a general openness towards consumption,’ he says. The collection, he argues, integrates austere Victorian shapes with the saturated colours typical of Memphis, ‘establishing a new harmony between two distant yet analogue periods.’

It is not the first time Piccioli has spun his work around contrasting cultural references: his first solo effort (after Maria Grazia Chiuri’s departure from the label in 2016) was inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights and featured a collaboration with Zandra Rhodes, while his latest menswear collection included slogans by English punk artist Jamie Reid. ‘Through being open to dialogue, the brand’s standards are always elevated,’ says Piccioli. ‘To me, Valentino has always been the expression of pure beauty, and I feel that connecting its patrimonial value to other forms of beauty is a natural process.’

For this latest work, Piccioli looked to two of the founding members of Memphis, French artist Nathalie Du Pasquier and British designer George Sowden, who collaborated with Piccioli, lending recent works which appear throughout the collection. Du Pasquier and Sowden are life partners who took different creative routes when Memphis disbanded in 1987. Du Pasquier took to painting full-time, producing abstract, geometric works that push the boundaries of spatial representation. Meanwhile, Sowden continued his work in industrial design, collaborating with brands such as Driade, Steelcase and Alessi, culminating in the launch of his namesake homewares brand in 2010.

The works Piccioli chose for the Valentino collection come from two specific projects: a print series by Du Pasquier entitled Counting, and Sowden’s Designing without a Cause illustrations. Counting is a playful series of illustrated basic maths calculations performed by hands, numbers and mundane objects painted on colourful backgrounds. Designing without a Cause, on the other hand, is a collection of works Sowden has created over the past two years and further developed for an exhibition earlier this year entitled The Heart of the Matter. Piccioli focused exclusively on the black and white illustrations from this series, based on abstract patterns originally created to work as prints on textiles, decorations and details on manufactured objects, some dating back decades. The designs were taken apart by Sowden and used as raw material, uprooted and decontextualised. ‘[These works] allowed me to play with two aspects of the creative process I am most passionate about – chromatic experimentation and composition,’ adds Piccioli.

He built the collection around Victorian-inspired contemporary silhouettes, mixing colours and prints from the same era with the more modern works. ‘I played with different consistencies and heft, and adapted [Du Pasquier and Sowden’s] works to long dresses and coats so their personalities would be properly expressed,’ says Piccioli. Du Pasquier’s colourful prints are recreated in velvet, fur and leather, while Sowden’s designs are reproduced as an overall print on floaty silk dresses, combined with pastels, the austere silhouettes emboldened by swirly patterns. ‘The way Valentino developed the drawings was very clever and refined,’ says Sowden. ‘Mixing [them] with 19th century silhouettes was very postmodern,’ echoes Du Pasquier. ‘It is always interesting to have different worlds meeting: it’s where culture comes from.’

The works Piccioli has used make clear how far the pair has pushed on, post-Memphis. ‘I would never have done these drawings in the 1980s, but I am still the same person, and my taste for graphics is not radically different,’ says Du Pasquier. Piccioli admires how the pair’s visual languages originated in a collective but became personal and singular. ‘It’s a great challenge that both artists have done successfully,’ he adds.

The three creatives still see the strong influence of Memphis in contemporary culture; and not just as nostalgia but as a visual approach as valid and vital as ever. ‘Memphis was a defining moment of the late-20th century. It influenced the aesthetics and identity of global design,’ says Sowden. ‘As such,it will never go away, but will be forever discussed and criticised, added to, copied and constantly reinterpreted by generations to come.’ Piccioli agrees: ‘The Memphis Group is resurfacing as a revolutionary reaction to the standardisation of taste and attire. Its message is now more pertinent than ever. Its position of gentle disregard and defiance may be a lesson that we can make our own.’

As originally featured in the September 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*222)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Valentino website, the Nathalie Du Pasquier website and the George Sowden website

Exhibitions documenting the life and work of Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007) abound this year as galleries and museums – such as The Met and Le Stanze del Vetro – celebrate what would have been the influential Austro-Italian designer’s 100th birthday. One of the latest surveys comes courtesy of furniture manufacturing megalith Vitra, which recently opened ‘Ettore Sottsass – Rebel and Poet’ at its Basel campus in Switzerland.

Located in the new Herzog & de Meuron-designed Schaudepot space, the exhibition sees the family-owned brand draw from its own archives to form a showcase of approximately 30 of Sottsass’ furniture designs, consumer products, as well as numerous photographs and writings. The exhibition, Vitra says, ‘pays tribute to an extraordinary designer who did not regard form and function as constraints, but rather viewed design as an opportunity to explore the nature of human existence’.

Supplemented by excerpts from Sottsass’ poetic and literary texts, as well as photographs from the ‘Metafore’ series (1972-1979), where Sottsass reveals his thoughts on fundamental design issues, the exhibition tracks the unconventional designer’s development, and demonstrates how he succeeded in challenging the established tastes of the middle class throughout his career.

His collaborations with furniture manufacturer Poltronova and office equipment manufacturer Olivetti resulted in bold, rule-breaking designs that demonstrate his early love of vivid colours and distinctive structures. His ‘Califfo’ sofa (1964) for Poltronova is among the exhibited works, as is his pillar box red ‘Valentine’ typewriter (1969) for Olivetti.

In the 1970s, Sottsass took on various roles: as a participant in the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition ‘Italy: The New Domestic Landscape’ (1972); as a central figure of the design initiative Global Tools (1973-1975); and as a member of the design collective Alchimia (1976-1980), when he created the characterful ‘Seggiolina da Pranzo’ (1979-80) – one the 30 showcased pieces.

However, Sottsass is perhaps best remembered as the leading figure of the 1980s design collective Memphis, where he created some of his most distinctive work. Inspired by pop culture and liberated from a functionalist design approach, it was during this time that Sottsass created the ‘Carlton’ bookcase (1981), the lamps ‘Ashoka’ (1981) ‘Tahiti’ (1981), and the ‘Tartar’ table (1985).

Running until 24 September, Vitra’s exhibition serves as an insightful tribute to this 20th-century designer, rebel and poet, whose legacy continues to enrich our everyday lives.

INFORMATION

‘Ettore Sottsass – Rebel and Poet’ is on view until 24 September. For more information, visit the Vitra Museum website

ADDRESS

Vitra Schaudepot
Charles-Eames-Strasse 2
79576 Weil am Rhein

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'This is actually my childhood desk seat,’ says jeweller Sabine Getty, tapping the colour-blocked arms of a Memphis ‘Palace’ chair, designed by George Sowden in 1983 and now installed in her new Mayfair studio-cum-showroom.

‘When I was a child, my home in Beirut had a ton of Memphis pieces,’ Getty recalls. ‘It was the 1980s,’ she smiles, pointing to a pair of asymmetric Memphis ‘Kristall’ and ‘Flamingo’ side tables (designed by Michele De Lucchi in 1981 and 1984 respectively) that once flanked her bed. A ‘Tahiti’ duck lamp, designed by Memphis founder Ettore Sottsass in 1981, completes the childhood haul. Its enamelled metal head was still covered with kids’ stickers when she fished it out of storage. ‘I kind of forgot about it all, and then as I was designing [a new jewellery collection], I looked at my drawings and thought, “That reminds me of something I know!”’

Getty swiftly put in a call to her mother, Egyptian interior designer Karine Ratl – who still has a penchant for ‘Memphis meets Louis XIV’ furnishings – followed by another to gallerist Keith Johnson of Urban Architecture, who sourced her office’s pièce de résistance, an original 1981 Peter Shire ‘Brazil’ desk for Memphis, tracked down in Milan. ‘It was dying in storage so it was great to give it a life!’ says Getty. 

The daughter of Lebanese financier Charbel Ghanem, Getty grew up between Geneva, Beirut and the south of France, with aspirations of becoming an opera singer or an actress before she enrolled at New York’s Gemological Institute of America (GIA). There, Getty found her true vocation and upon her graduation her debut pieces were picked up by Los Angeles design destination Maxfield. In 2012 she founded Sabine G, which became Sabine Getty this year, following her lavish nuptials – for which the bride wore Schiaparelli couture – to Joseph Getty, son of Getty Images co-founder Mark Getty, and the great-grandson of oil tycoon Jean Paul Getty.

The jeweller’s fourth collection is a bold departure from its predecessors, which were far finer and more delicate in their old-world intricacies. ‘I was looking at Sonia Delaunay paintings with these circular, colourful shapes and zigzags and that’s where I started from,’ she says of the new season’s linear forms. ‘But then I looked back [at the work in progress] and thought, “No wait, it looks more 1980s, it’s taking another direction.”’ That new course was Memphis. ‘But it’s not a pure imitation. It’s more of a vibe,’ she clarifies. ‘With Memphis, the possibilities are infinite because there is so much in Memphis design, so it took quite a long time to simplify and get it down to pure lines and fun colours.’

With the new collection, Getty has also moved away from diamonds and similarly precious stones in favour of semi-precious topaz. ‘I decided to go for lower-end stones,’ she says of the Fisher-Price-hued gems that adorn sinuous cuffs and star-pointed chokers. ‘If I had used sapphires, the pieces would have been much smaller, and it was very important to have scale.’

At the brand’s first boutique, on Berkeley Square, Getty has maintained the same daring. As soon as she saw the location – a stone’s throw from the run of high-end jewellers on Old Bond Street – she recognised its promise, despite the ‘white walls, grey carpet and corporate office furniture’ that came with it.

‘I did some colour research and landed on a poster of Bill Murray from [the 2004 movie] The Life Aquatic,’ she says of the inspiration behind her primary palette, executed in high gloss to achieve a vintage effect. ‘I’ve also used the same three colours at home,’ she says, gesturing around her. ‘My kitchen is this yellow, my living room is that red, and my bedroom is the blue. So it’s like an extension of the same universe.’

Under foot is plush, Atlantic-blue carpet, while a selection of stools from Kartell’s Sottsass tribute line (launched in 2015) and Dutch design brand Pols Potten complete the Memphis-inspired look. Getty has certainly run with the theme – even her Jansen teacups dutifully nod to the movement – but she is no design snob. A second desk, from Ikea, aligns just as well with the red room’s colour scheme as does Matteo Thun’s Memphis ‘Santa Fe’ light that hangs overhead.

Getty has no intention of redecorating the space each season. ‘No, not every time!’ she says. ‘I really like it. It’s very happy, it has character and most of all it’s fun.’ Just like her audacious jewels.

As originally featured in the September 2016 issue of Wallpaper* (W*210)

INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Sabine Getty website

Photography: Paolo Di Lucente

ADDRESS

Sabine Getty
52 Berkeley Square
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What a thrill to stand in front of David Bowie’s record player and imagine him pulling favourite albums by atonal noisemaker Glenn Branca or pioneering Dutch geeks The Electrosoniks from a shelf in his New York home and blasting them out to Iman or Brian Eno, at neighbour-bothering volumes.

Bowie’s 1960s Brionvega music centre, designed by the Castiglioni brothers, isn’t in mint condition – it’s slightly foxed around the edges of the detachable speakers, and Manhattan sunshine has discoloured the unit’s white melamine surfaces to a buttery yellow tone – but the unconventional, jolie laide piece of industrial design, exhibited in the George Street foyer of Sotheby’s ’Bowie/Collector’ sale preview in London, is indicative of the man and his eye, his intelligently informed thing, for art. Someone who collected for love, for beauty, inspiration, contemplation, entertainment and amusement, rather than just for money.   

Bowie’s fascination with not just art, but also with artists, the art world, art journalism, auction houses and the creative process of design, is well documented. Away from music he was a regular at salerooms, art fairs and ateliers. He befriended advisors and gallerists, enlisted the services of specialist dealers, wrote for art magazines, referenced art in interviews and in song lyrics – ’Joe The Lion’ from Bowie’s landmark Heroes album (’Nail me to my car and I’ll tell you who you are’) being a paean to self-harming performance artist Chris Burden.

In keeping with Bowie’s eclectic but considered preferences, the modest Sotheby’s preview offers insight into a much larger collection that acknowledges established artists – Henry Moore, Jean Michel Basquiat (Bowie purchased Air Power in 1995 for £78,500 – it’s now valued at £2.5million), Damien Hirst and Frank Auerbach are all represented here – and delights in championing the work of lesser known talent also.

So, next to the Basquiat is a is a magnificently phallic William Turnbull, an energetic, monochrome abstract by St Ives painter Peter Lanyon and a pair of naive 'outsider art' drawings by residents at Gugging, a psychiatric ward near Vienna, Austria. Bowie and Eno visited the hospital in early 1994, interviewed and photographed its patients, and bought some of their work. Their outsider art experience would become the inspiration for Bowie’s 1995 industrial rock album Outside.

An ice-cream array of furniture, lighting and ceramics is the centrepiece for the main room at the Sotheby’s show. Bowie collected Memphis – the eccentric, Marmite-ish 1980s movement founded by Ettore Sottsass. The style isn't to everyone’s taste – think of it as the Let’s Dance to the Patrick Caulfield canvas’ Station To Station – but viewed within the context of the Hirst spin painting and the dumpster sculpture pieces by Beninese artist Romauld Hazoumé, you can see how the group’s bonkers Milanese take on tribal, pop kitsch appealed. 

But it is the dessert-thick, whipped oils of Auerbach’s Head of Gerda Boehm that leaves the most lasting impression. A profoundly affecting portrait of the London-born artist’s cousin, the painting proved particularly inspirational for the songwriter. 'I can look at it and say: My God, yeah!' Bowie once said of it. 'I want to sound like that looks.'

Look behind the scenes of the unpacking of ’Bowie/Collector’ above

The 'Bowie/Collector' exhibition and auction will be staged at Sotheby's New Bond Street in November, preceeded by a preview world tour. For more information, visit the Sotheby's website

Preview World Tour:
London: 20 July – 9 August
Los Angeles: 20–21 September
New York: 26–29 September
Hong Kong: 12–15 October

The Exhibition:
'Bowie/Collector': 1–10 November, Sotheby’s New Bond Street, London

The Auctions:
Part I: Modern & Contemporary Art, Evening Auction, 10 November
Part II: Modern & Contemporary Art, Day Auction, 11 November
Part III: Post-Modernist Design: Ettore Sottsass and the Memphis Group, 11 November

Colour can be a scary business, but not so for Masquespacio founders Ana Milena Hernández Palacios and Christophe Penasse. The Valencia-based design studio relish the opportunity to pair hues and explore tonalities, pushing vignettes to the extreme and making them modern and fresh; a bright disposition which has translated into a new identity and branding for the multidisciplinary consultancy.

The identity itself plays on their copious colour confidence. The ‘S’ in their otherwise minimal ‘Mas’ logo – meaning ‘more’ in English – is slit down the middle, illustrating the ‘added value offered by the creative consultancy in each of its projects’, the duo explains. The ever-changing background colours – which can be adapted to suit different clients, projects or times of year – illustrate their versatility and adaptability.

Big fans of the Memphis Group, the Masquespacio team looked to pairing bold hues and geometric forms to create a comfortable office environment.

‘Although it is a working space, we looked to incorporate decorative elements, besides vivid colours and upholstered furniture, with the aim of creating a warm atmosphere, rather just a place of work,’ explains creative director Hernández Palacios.

But furniture is certainly part of it. The studio's 'Toadstool Collection' for Missana decorates the reception room, while creative material combinations – like marble, birch plywood, oak and lacquered MDF – create various spaces within. Bringing everything together in a natural way is an array of greenery.

That's not say Hernández Palacios and Penasse are finished with the space; Masquespacio may be bedded in, but the duo have more prospective plans for the studio. 'We are thinking about adding a workshop to an actually inhabited space; when we designed the space we were already thinking about it, although we didn't have the need to do it at that particular moment,' Penasse explains. 'As we start to work on new products to launch exclusively through our studio and not through a commercial brand, our need to have a workshop space for the prototyping process is growing on a daily base. The space itself helps us to focus on another kind of client looking for a more elegant design, but still with our personal explosive touch.'

For more information, visit Studio Masquespacio's website

Since this article was published we have explored Masquespacio's new HQ, its base from 2024.

The Valencia-based studio Masquespacio have unveiled their debut collection for Spanish furniture and upholstery brand Missana. 

Inspired by the Memphis movement of the 1980s (and more specifically Michael Graves' graphic architecture,) the 'Toadstool' collection is as bright as it is bold. Small, yet perfectly formed, it features rounded shapes and a range of colourful fabrics for its two seater sofa, table and series of poufs.

Postmodernist hues of forest and mint green, salmon pink and deep navy prove a bold foil to the other materials in use: the marble, wood or gold plated metal pedestals.

'This [collection] represents very clearly what Masquespacio’s work is,' says co-founder Christophe Penasse. '[We are] inspired by the visual culture and by the fact that graphic design is always present in one way or another.'

Missana’s upholstery technique is clear to see, too. Each piece of furniture designed by Ana Milena Hernández Palacios and Penasse uses Raf Simons' fabrics for Kvadrat, Wallpaper* Design Awards 2015's winner of the Best Alliance gong, and is meticulously assembled by Missana's experts. Best of all, though, is the number of combinations available, mixing pedestal materials and fabric hues endlessly for an equally pleasing and personal medley.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit Masquespacio's website

Photography: Cualiti

For the first time ever in the US, Friedman Benda gallery in New York is displaying Ettore Sottsass’ diverse early-career oeuvre of cermaics, furniture, lighting and photographs. Pictured: Marc Benda, holding a vase from the Tenebre Series, designed by Sottsass in 1963. Also by Sottsass, from left, ’Califfo’ sofa, 1965; ’Offerta a Shiva’ plates, 1964; Library, 1965; vases from Lava Series, 1957, Rocchetti Series, 1957–1959, and Tenebre series, 1957–1959

Looking back on his early experiments with ceramics, Ettore Sottsass recalled mucking about in the 1950s with crude Tuscan clay and cold overglaze enamels – materials that connected him to a tradition of wares ‘made for eating pea soup and potatoes on the large wooden tables of convents in the Sienese hills’. The experience pulled him further away from modernism’s refined rationality and closer to humanity – vital yet fragile, alive but imperfect. ‘I began to think that if there was a reason for designing objects,’ wrote the Italian architect and designer in Domus, ‘it was in one way or another to help people live.’

Some fruits of that epiphany are now going on display in the US for the first time in a major exhibition at the newly renovated Friedman Benda gallery in New York. Ten years in the making, the show serves up a rarely seen portion of Sottsass’ diverse output: ceramics, furniture, lighting and photographs from the early stages of his career. Previously only available to institutions, many of the approximately 100 works, which date from 1955 through to 1969, have never before been offered for sale. The show is the result of a decade of hunting down important collections of Sottsass’ work and homes he designed as well as a close collaboration with his estate, which decided several years ago to begin selling selected works, initially exclusively to museums. ‘We are looking for both institutional and private buyers with this exhibition,’ says Marc Benda, who founded the Manhattan gallery with Barry Friedman in 2007. ‘The show should serve to broaden the appreciation and connoisseurship of a discerning collecting audience, but also a wider public.’

A summer makeover has unified Friedman Benda’s Chelsea base, creating a single open space and adding two large windows that open to the street. The more compact arrangement brings a new intimacy to the gallery. ‘It was very much a conscious decision to make the space a bit smaller,’ explains Benda. ‘We want designers to design tight shows.’ The choice to unveil the refurbished space with a Sottsass show was also a deliberate one. ‘He is part of the DNA of the gallery,’ says Benda, who has mounted several previous shows of the designer’s work. ‘I wanted to see the early work in its own context, and when we started putting this exhibition together, we realised that a completely different Sottsass emerged. I think this show will shatter people’s expectations.’

Most surprised will be those who know Sottsass only as the man behind the cherry red Olivetti ‘Valentine’ typewriter of 1969 or as the godfather of the Memphis group, the bright and colourful reinvigoration of Italy’s Radical Design movement. ‘It’s good to remember that he was 64 – nearly retirement age – when Memphis was launched in 1981,’ explains Glenn Adamson, director of New York’s Museum of Arts and Design. ‘It was really a late manoeuvre in a long career, and to the extent that it was an ironic “anti-design” project, it only came after many strongly felt works from earlier years.’

Among those works are the approximately 50 ceramic pieces that are the cornerstone of the exhibition. Discrete sets each attributable to a single year, they show Sottsass exploring form and colour, embracing craft with the humble terracotta he likened to human flesh, and then defying it through the use of industrial enamels. ‘He would collaborate with artisans and companies that would provide the know-how,’ says Benda, ‘but he took this millennia-old material and made things that fit in nowhere but his own vision.’

With ceramics, Sottsass found a way to rediscover archetypal forms: many of his works from the 1950s and 1960s have a symbolic or totemic quality, from the lighting and mirrors he designed for Arredoluce to a sideboard made graphic by rosewood slats. ‘These laid the pathway to postmodern compositional technique, though the vivid juxtaposition of volumes, patterns and colours,’ says Adamson.

Sustaining and enhancing these bold combinations is a mastery of proportions, itself the product of complex decision making. ‘He did everything with intention. Nothing was unconsidered, from the way he arranged the objects on his desk, to the way he dressed, to how he chose the right pencil to draw with, to the consideration of where we all met for lunch,’ says David Kelley, co-founder of design firm Ideo, who counted Sottsass as both a colleague and a friend (and an architect: Kelley lives in a Californian home designed for him by Sottsass Associati). ‘He enjoyed making and designing all these decisions. And from him, I learned how to savour these normal everyday life occurrences.’

This unique combination of decisiveness and playfulness is especially apparent in the interiors and furnishings Sottsass designed during this period. Often enlivened by wall compositions that combined paintings and ceramics, the spaces alternated surfaces and colours in what he once described as ‘an essentially colourful and graphic game, which no longer reflects a structural idea’. The focus at Friedman Benda will be the modular, colourful components of these spaces. Rather than recreate the rooms immortalised in Domus, ‘the exhibition will centre on the works themselves,’ notes Benda, ‘in a contemporary context’.

For the home of a director at Olivetti he created a unique wall-mounted bookcase that Benda snagged for the show. Massive yet somehow sprightly in lacquered wood and walnut, the 1965 design keeps a row of tall, extruded lines in dialogue with human scale. ‘There are certain tenets of modernism that he retains at this moment, but he fiddles with proportions in a way that makes it his own,’ says Benda. ‘With this bookcase, he plays with the vertical versus horizontal in a way that the Scandinavians would never even think of.’

The energy that courses through Sottsass’ work is all the more remarkable for its synthesis and integration of influences – the Dolomites of his childhood, his architectural training, encounters with the likes of Picasso and Ernst, travels in India and North Africa, a stint working for George Nelson, a protracted hospital stay in California – in a way that produces something entirely new, free of apparent references. ‘He’s infusing different cultures, personal experiences. I wanted to mine the enormous amount of information that was left to us and that hasn’t really been attacked,’ says Benda. ‘This is the most intimate show I’ve ever done; it’s almost a dialogue with him.’

‘For many of us in the industrial design profession, Ettore’s legacy will always be that he led a movement that said it’s OK to have fun with what you design,’ says Kelley. ‘He gave us the permission to be personally expressive with what we designed and to make things more human, less rational, and more playful. He taught us that our designs could be less rule-based, imperfect, and messy, and that this approach to design would make people more vital and comfortable. Life is messy and design can also be messy. Our lives could be just a little bit more enjoyable lived Ettore’s way.’

As originally featured in the October 2015 edition of Wallpaper* (W*199)

INFORMATION

‘Ettore Sottsass 1955–1969’ is on view at Friedman Benda until 17 October

Photography: Daniel Shea

ADDRESS

Friedman Benda
515 W 26th Street
New York, NY 10001

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A renewed affection for the Memphis Group's quirky, postmodern aesthetic has kept its hold on the design community for a good while now, and there are no signs of any slowing, especially with the latest project from Kartell this week. The design company's newest collection is made up of never-before-seen products by the one and only Ettore Sottsass. Designed in 2004 for Kartell but never produced, the energetic collection, which includes four vases, three tabouret stools and one lamp, is as colourful and true to the design icon's style as one could ever hope for.

Intended as a complete collection by Sottsass, who died in 2007, the eight pieces were conceived to symbolise his return to industrial design. Kartell's president Claudio Luti says, 'When we invited Ettore Sottsass to design some objects for us, we agreed that the interesting side to our collaboration would be marking a sort of "return to industrial design" for Sottsass. His name has always been more linked to the idea of unique pieces.

'The brief was to express the post-futurist aesthetic, typical of Sottsass, by means of an industrial project. The challenge was to use plastic materials and technologies, like injection, to create decorative accessories like vases and more functional pieces, such as stools.'

About collaborating with a design master such as Sottsass, Luti recalls, 'It was a very stimulating exchange. I clearly remember his highly intellectual approach and at the same time, a very understated, spontaneous attitude. I felt honoured to sit down at the same table, and at the same time my wish was to translate his ideas and iconic design into real Kartell industrial products.'

Despite working on the collection with Sottsass from 2004 to 2005, Kartell chose not to bring the collection to life because of technology constraints at the time. So demanding are some of the concepts that even with the use of highly advanced injection techniques today, the collection's more decorative and complex silhouettes are still being evaluated on whether they can be ultimately produced. However, the 'Calice' vase and 'Pilastro' and 'Colonna' stools will definitely be brought to market, with others to come in the near future.

Luti says, 'Modern technology now allows us to produce the Sottsass designs to a standard and level of sophistication that we would not have managed ten years ago. I am convinced that Sottsass himself would have been a huge fan of how we have brought his objects to life. Their unique, unmistakable look will set them apart in their industrial, international future.'

To celebrate this momentous collection's debut, Kartell has transformed its Milanese flagship boutique into a spatial tribute to the Memphis design movement. In addition to transforming the space with a vibrant, patterned setting designed by Ferruccio Laviani to introduce the new designs, Kartell has collaborated with Memphis Group members like Nathalie du Pasquier and George Sowden to upholster chairs, including Philippe Starck's 'Mademoiselle', 'Foliage' by Patricia Urquiola and 'Trix' by Piero Lissoni, for a new Pop look. Together, it's a joyous testament to Italy's design heritage and its present.

ADDRESS 

Kartell
via Filippo Turati 5
Milano

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Niche speaker brand Moss knows it’s treading a well-worn path with its new Bluetooth speakers, but the Singapore-based studio has blended high fidelity with neat design and fantastic attention to detail that sets it apart from the rest. Set up by British audiophile and designer Nik Lee, Moss is devoted to a single product, a tiny cylindrical Bluetooth speaker that’s bedecked in fetching coloured stripes, giving a hint of Memphis-era style in a tiny package.

For just $99, the dolly mixture colours and no-nonsense polished acrylic housing create a speaker that’s simple to use, easy to carry and won’t clutter up the shelves with matte black mediocrity when not in use. The hand-polished acrylic also bulks up the sound and aficionados of the heyday of the Manchester music scene will find the colour names familiar.

'The night we launched Memphis, during the Salone del Mobile, we could not believe that the road in front of the showroom had to be closed after an hour, because so many people were on the street,' designer Matteo Thun told Wallpaper* in 2011 on the occasion of the group's thirtieth anniversary, adding, 'We did not intend to shock at all!'

Known for its Fisher-Price hues, bulbous curves, asymmetrical shapes and graphic structural forms, the movement has been making a steady comeback for some time now but, with a slew of recent exhibitions, and a new monograph by Phaidon celebrating the life and work of Memphis founder Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007), the creative industries are again in the colourful throws of a Memphis moment. Not only are archive pieces being given the spotlight once more, Memphis is also inspiring fresh works from a host of contemporary architects, painters and fashion designers.

This year's Salone del Mobile kicked off proceedings with 'La Collezione Memphis alle Stelline' at Galleria Gruppo Credito Valtellinese, offering the largest museum exhibition of Memphis ever presented in its birthplace of Milan. The event was such a success that it's to be shown again at the Pila Gallery from the 1-29 June. This showcase was also tied to Milanese furniture designer Giacomo Moor's 'Metropolis' presentation at Post Design, which is the brand name under which Memphis Company produces its new collections, and the gallery that exhibits Memphis' productions.

Jumping to Paris, the celebrations continued with French architect Charles Zana's staging of 'Vasi e Fiore', a curated collection of vases realised by the Memphis group and shown at Paris' Musée Delacroix. 'I discovered the Memphis movement while I was studying architecture,' explains Zana. 'Memphis is a true revolution in the world of design. It opened the way for new forms of design in the 1990s, distancing function and causing a more artistic attitude.'

The road to Memphis was forged in 1981 by Sottsass, and over the years involved up to 20 designers who shared his Post Modern aspirations, creating furniture, objects, fabrics, ceramics and buildings that sat somewhere between the realms of kitsch and futurism, quickly becoming a brash badge for 'New Design'.

Moving past Art Deco and Pop Art, the group admired the Bauhaus, but felt limited by their principals, and was perhaps best known for its colourful assault on interiors. This bold aesthetic has recently been referenced in American artist Hernan Bas' new exhibition titled, 'Memphis Living', on show at London's Victoria Miro gallery until 31 May. In his painting series Bas incorporates key design elements of the movement's aesthetic that he first encountered through pop culture references in his youth. 'In my opinion, living "Memphis" means more than a love of bright colours, pattern and uncomfortable seating,' Bas reflects. 'It was an impassioned moment, a daring, bold-formed and wildly influential movement that is just catching our rear-view attention again.'

The fashion industry is similarly making sure Memphis has our full attention. American Apparel recently collaborated with core member, artist Nathalie du Pasquier on a 43-piece summer collection that's lavished with her graphic prints.

On the Spring/Summer 2014 runways, both Céline and Alexander McQueen embraced the movement's Mobilo-hued primary palette, while dizzying optical graphics were seen at Marc by Marc Jacobs, Opening Ceremony and Roland Mouret. Upping the showmanship, Karl Lagerfeld's Chanel 'art gallery' was dotted with Memphis-style sculptures - no doubt a throw back to his former Monaco apartment that was entirely clad in Memphis. Come Autumn/Winter 2014, Proenza Schouler also looked to the movement's upbeat energy and light-hearted humour, manifested in the show's onslaught of trippy graphics on pattern-blocked coats and dresses.

Sottsass may have left the group in 1985, with it disbandoning by 1988, but the Memphis legacy certainly lives on, culminating with an upcoming talk by his wife Barbara Radice at London's Design Museum, offering an intimate insight into the world of one of the twentieth century's most revered design-thinkers and influencers.

Now that the weather in Milan is officially frosty, guests of Sergio Rossi were more than happy to gather inside the cozy, Christmas-lit confines of 10 Corso Como for the Italian footwear brand's homage to Memphis design.

Creative Director Francesco Russo, whose Spring 2013 collection was inspired by the bold graphics of the Milanese design collective, oversaw the 'Sergio Rossi Meets Memphis' installation in Corso Como's upstairs gallery, where fashion snuggled up happily with design.

Displayed on black and white pedestals covered in signature Memphis patterns, the Sergio Rossi shoes were alluringly set off by vintage glassware and table top items, loaned from Galleria Memphis di Milano.

After the exhibit, Russo and Sergio Rossi CEO Christope Melard hosted an intimate dinner downstairs for guests such as Franca Sozzani, Carla Sozzani, Nina Yashar, Andrea Pompilio, Teresa Missoni, Luca Guadagnino, and Saturnino. 

It's been awhile since we've eaten at Corso Como 10 and the report card came back stellar: full-flavoured, soft pillows of mozzarella di buffala cheese were followed by a fresh tartar of tuna with hearty chunks of ripe avocado (rarer than an oil well in Milan), pumpkin filled ravioli and the best panettone in town, handpicked from Pasticceria Marchesi and served with a soft, sweet cream. Our stomachs are officially ready for Mama's holiday spread.

Memphis, photographed by Studio Azzurro, 1981
Courtesy of Memphis SRL

Memphis was born in 1981, when 60-year-old design grandee Ettore Sottsass invited young pals, Matteo Thun, Martine Bedin, Aldo Cibic, Michele De Lucchi and Marco Zanini to his apartment in Milan with the idea of creating a new line of furniture. The design equivalent of big shoulder pads and leopard print leggings, Memphis furniture was brash and gaudy, and came in garish colours. Its quirky shapes and so-bad-its-good aesthetic deliberately broke all the rules of the 'clean design' practiced and preached by Modernism. It was an overnight sensation and quickly morphed into a cultural movement and a symbol of 'New Design'.

As Memphis celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, Matteo Thun reflects on those heady days.

Did you really feel like you were breaking the rules in the beginning with Memphis?

As with any rebellion that comes from the inside, we were emotionally uploaded. It was power in the present. Product design in the late 1970s was totally frozen. We admired the designers of Bauhaus, but felt constricted by their dogma. That frustration forced us to seek an alternative.

How did its success affect design?

Memphis had positive and negative effects. After 30 years, the most positive impact is that it accelerated the ways in which we find a sensorial design language. We are back to man and to his senses. For a long time, design was only 'visual'. Now we are ready to explore the sense of touch again.

Sottsass grew disillusioned with Memphis and the media circus that surrounded it and left in 1985. How did you feel about him leaving Memphis at that point?

All of us wanted to stop at some point. We were all working at night, as well as doing our day jobs. A rebellion was inevitable. And a manifesto only stays strong and sustainable when it exists for a certain time limit.

How does your work today compare to that made for Memphis?

Actually, the work I made during the Memphis period is only superficially different to what I make today. The principles of sustainability that have defined it for many years are still there.

Do you think there is anything out there today that resembles Memphis?

No. It has not yet been found. Perhaps Memphis was the last strong design movement. But today's world is asking for something else: no dogma!

Post Design is Memphis' Milan-based showroom, founded by Alberto Bianchi Albrici and Sottsass. What is your involvement with Memphis today?

There have been about 20 designers involved with Memphis over the years. It's a loose arrangement - a group of friends who enjoy being together. Those in charge at Post Design decide who they exhibit.

What are your happiest memories from that period?

The night we launched Memphis during the Salone del Mobile. We could not believe that the road in front of the showroom had to be closed after an hour, because so many people were on the street. We did not intend to shock at all - the opposite!