The Memphis Group was an influential Italian design and architecture movement of the 1980s. 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, disbanded in 1988.
Memphis was the collective name of a group of architects and designers who were working in Milan – among them George Sowden, Michele de Lucchi, Marco Zanini, Aldo Cibic, Matheo Thun, Nathalie du Pasquier and Martine Bedin, who were strongly influenced by the radical work of their ‘mentor’, the older architect and designer, Ettore Sottsass (b. 1917), who had worked for Olivetti through the 1960s as well as experimenting on his own designs from the 1950s through to the 1970s.
Prepared to mix 20th century styles, colours and materials, it positioned itself as a fashion rather than an academic movement, and hoped to erase the International Style where Postmodernism had failed, preferring an outright revival and continuation of Modernism proper rather than a re-reading of it.
The Memphis group was comprised of Italian designers and architects who created a series of highly influential products in 1981. They disagreed with the approach of the time and challenged the idea that products had to follow conventional shapes, colours, textures and patterns.
The work of the Memphis Group has been described as vibrant, eccentric and ornamental. It was conceived by the group to be a ‘fad’, which like all fashions would very quickly come to an end. In 1988 Sottsass dismantled the group.