Postmodern design

Colour, irony and rule-breaking – Memphis and postmodernism put an end to the authority of functionalism.

During the 1970s designers began to question the strict rules of modernism. The oil crisis, the environmental movement and radical design in Italy raised new questions about what design is for.

Ettore Sottsass founded the Memphis Group in Milan in 1981. Their furniture was ablaze with colour, laminated and almost absurd – Carlton, a bookcase that looks like a figure, became an icon. Memphis showed that design could be humour and commentary.

Philippe Starck gave the designer star status, and postmodern architects such as Michael Graves designed kettles for Alessi. At the same time ecological design and criticism of consumer society were growing.

• Radical design in Italy
• Venturi and Scott Brown – more is not less
• Memphis – laminate, leopard print and rebellion
• Design culture in the 1980s – and a Swedish concrete chair
• The other path: responsibility, ergonomics and less but better
• Close reading: the Macintosh and digital form
• Japan and poetic form
• The Nordic countries in the postmodern era
• Women, critique and new voices
• Afterlife: from disgrace to the museum
• Ettore Sottsass
• Philippe Starck
• Shiro Kuramata