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Written by Craig Jamieson
Go ahead and picture the most "80s furniture you can imagine. Yes, it"s likely not what you expected to do when you decided to visit TopGear.com, but bear with us. If you"re like us, a contrasting mishmash of vibrant colours and a melange of circles, squares and arches popped into your head. But why is this important?Well, this entire design direction is thanks to the Memphis Group, a Milanese design house that did designs for your, um, house. For a brief period from 1981 to 1991, the Italian designers brought forth a plethora of postmodern technicolour. The clean, simple shapes and lurid colour combinations plucked from the pages of 1950s Americana, Art Deco and beyond were the perfect antitheses to the excessive, heavy and drab designs that would have otherwise dominated the 1980s.If we wanted to play I spend my weekends at the Tate", we could say that the brash single-mindedness of Memphis Group"s designs was simpatico with the zeitgeist of an increasingly impromptu and casual generation, unfettered by concerns of timelessness and almost wilfully embracing ephemera. Or, in other words, the designs reflected the times. Maybe not where you grew up, but certainly where you wanted to grow up.
Date written: 5 Apr 2017
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 7321
Go ahead and picture the most "80s furniture you can imagine. Yes, it"s likely not what you expected to do when you decided to visit TopGear.com, but bear with us. If you"re like us, a contrasting mishmash of vibrant colours and a melange of circles, squares and arches popped into your head. But why is this important?Well, this entire design direction is thanks to the Memphis Group, a Milanese design house that did designs for your, um, house. For a brief period from 1981 to 1991, the Italian designers brought forth a plethora of postmodern technicolour. The clean, simple shapes and lurid colour combinations plucked from the pages of 1950s Americana, Art Deco and beyond were the perfect antitheses to the excessive, heavy and drab designs that would have otherwise dominated the 1980s.If we wanted to play I spend my weekends at the Tate", we could say that the brash single-mindedness of Memphis Group"s designs was simpatico with the zeitgeist of an increasingly impromptu and casual generation, unfettered by concerns of timelessness and almost wilfully embracing ephemera. Or, in other words, the designs reflected the times. Maybe not where you grew up, but certainly where you wanted to grow up.
Date written: 5 Apr 2017
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 7321