Masanori umeda biography of michael

In 1980 in Milan, Ettore Sottsass jr.

and Barbara Radice founded the Memphis collective. The name was inspired by Bob Dylan’s song Stuck in a mobile with the Memphis blues again. The members were a group of international architects and designers including Michele De Lucchi, Aldo Cibic, Matteo Thun, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Martine Bedin, George Sowden, Peter Shire, Marco Zanini, Hans Hollein, Andrea Branzi, Massimo Iosa Ghini, Thomas Bley, Masanori Umeda, Michael Graves, Shiro Kuramata, Gerard Taylor and Javier Mariscal.

In stark contrast to the standardised and traditional universe of contemporary furniture, the group’s production blended new and daring colour combinations with synthetic materials, plastic laminates, and post-modern forms, creating strikingly playful, symboli