Libertarian and Anti-functionalist: What Is the Memphis Design Movement?
Picture: Suryan//Dang
Written by Camilla Ghisleni | Translated by Diogo Simões
Far from the US state of Tennessee, the Memphis movement emerged in Milan in the 1980s and revolutionized design. Its gaudy colors, exaggerated patterns and conflicting prints were intended to overturn the minimalism status quo of the time, also contradicting the functionalist design postulated by the Bauhaus with its purely aesthetic and ornamental forms.