What is Memphis design movement?

Answer 1

Memphis design was a Milan-based collective of young furniture and product designers .The designers came together in 1981 and worked through 1985 when they separated.

Answer 2

Memphis Product + Furniture Designers (1981-1985)

MEMPHIS was a Milan-based collective of young furniture and product designers led by the veteran Ettore Sottsass. After its 1981 debut, Memphis dominated the early 1980s design scene with its post-modernist style.

The group was founded by Ettore Sottsass led on 16 December 1980, and resolved to meet again with their designs in February 1981. The result was a highly-acclaimed debut at the 1981 Salone del Mobile of Milan, the world's most prestigious furniture NEWY fair. The group, which eventually counted among its members Alessandro Mendini, Martine Bedin, Andrea Branzi, Aldo Cibic, Michele de Lucchi, Nathalie du Pasquier, Michael Graves, Hans Hollein, Arata Isozaki, Shiro Kuromata, Matteo Thun, Javier Mariscal, George Sowden, Marco Zanini, and the journalist Barbara Radice[1], disbanded in 1988.

Originally dubbed The New Design, the project was rechristened Memphis after the Bob Dylan lyric "Stuck Inside of Mobile (With the Memphis Blues Again)" stuck repeatedly at "Memphis Blues Again" on Sottsass' record player.

Their solution was to continue the experiments with uncoventional materials, historic forms, kitsch motifs and gaudy colours begun by Studio Alchymia, the radical late 1970s Italian design group to which Sottsass and De Lucchi had belonged. When the young Jasper Morrison and a couple of thousand others crowded into Arc '74 on 18 September 1981 they discovered furniture made from the flashily coloured plastic laminates emblazoned with kitsch geometric and leopard-skin patterns usually found in 1950s comic books or cheap cafés.

Other pieces of furniture and lights were made from industrial materials - printed glass, celluloids, fireflake finishes, neon tubes and zinc-plated sheet-metals - jazzed up with flamboyant colours and patterns, spangles and glitter. By glorying in the cheesiness of consumer culture, Memphis was "quoting from suburbia," as Sottsass put it. "Memphis is not new, Memphis is everywhere." Matteo Thun described Memphis as "a mental gymnasium".

It was an exuberant two-fingered salute to the design establishment after years in which colour and decoration had been taboo. Memphis also scoffed at the notion that 'good' design had to last. "It is no coincidence that the people who work for Memphis don't pursue a metaphysic aesthetic idea or an absolute of any kind, much less eternity," observed Sottsass. "Today everything one does is consumed. It is dedicated to life, not to eternity."

Little about Memphis was truly innovative. Most of its concepts had been trail-blazed by Alchymia. Yet the Memphis collaborators were much more adept at communicating their ideas and at manipulating Ettore Sottsass' contacts. He even persuaded Artemide, the Italian lighting manufacturer, to work with them.

Within the design world, Memphis was a watershed. "You were either for it, or against it. "All the boring old designers hated it. The rest of us loved it," recalled Bill Moggridge, co-founder of the IDEO industrial design group. Among the old guard was Vico Magistretti. "This furniture offers no possibility of development whatsoever," he declaimed. "It is only a variant of fashion."

Memphis was seen as equally sensational outside the closed confines of the design community. The packed opening party, cool graphics and hip young designers - male and female, from different countries - proved irresistible to the mass media. Perfectly in tune with an era when pop culture was dominated by the post-punk flamboyance of early 1980s new romanticism, Memphis was also a colourful, clearly defined manifestation of the often obscure post-modernist theories then so influential in art and architecture.

Memphis-Milano Design Collection at: http://www.Flickr.com/photos/memphis-milano/

Answer 3

Memphis design is a group of Italians that create products made from only acrylic, there are 7 members of the Memphis design group and the leader being Ettore Sossas, To Find Out More Google Memphis Design, :P

Answer 4

the designer of many Memphis products was down to Ettore sottsass a man with influential, creative and rebellious ideas. he was responsible for the idea behind post modernism, a concept which allowed designers to be as loud and outrageous with their ideas. he didn't want to follow the crowd and make similar products to everyone else and so created some magnificent creations completely different to everything previous. the public was stunned at his ideas and so the idea caught on and became as we know it today as the Memphis movement. without Ettore kick starting the trend other designers would not have been brave enough to continue the ideas. that's why today many of a appliances and furniture can really vary in colour materials and shape.