MemphisGroup_MyriemMsefer_12/06/2016

MEMPHIS GROUP

Presentation

The Memphis Group was an Italian design and architecture group founded in Milan by Ettore Sottsass in 1981 that designed Postmodern furniture, fabrics, ceramics, glass and metal objects from 1981 to 1987.

The Memphis group’s work often incorporated plastic laminate and was characterized by ephemeral design featuring colourful decoration and asymmetrical shapes, sometimes arbitrarily alluding to exotic or earlier styles.

-  Drawings and designs in bold colors with futuristic shapes
- Decorative styles of past years

Ettore Sottsass organised a meeting with some designers and formed this design collaborative named Memphis. 
They drew inspiration from such movements as Art Deco and Pop Art, including styles such as the 1950s Kitsch and futuristic themes.

The group produced and exhibited furniture and design objects. The result was a highly acclaimed debut at the 1981 Salone del Mobile of Milan, the world’s most prestigious furniture fair.


The group’s members included Alessandro Mendini, Martine Bedin, Andrea Branzi, Aldo Cibic, Michele de Lucchi, Nathalie du Pasquier, Hans Hollein, Arata Isozaki, Shiro Kuramata, Matteo Thun, Javier Mariscal, Luciano Paccagnella, George Sowden, Marco Zanini, Ettore Sottsass. 

They always kept in mind the aim to create controversy with their objects and openly criticize what was considered good design.

This is activity known as "anti-design"

Displayed products achieved much fame and caused much criticism in society of that time.

Alessandro Mendini

  

Martine Bedin

The group was aware that they were part of a fad, that's why Ettore Sottsass decided to disband the group in 1988 when the movement began to wane.

The theory of design was placed against the design itself, the foundation of the activities of the Memphis Group consisted of that, the "Anti-Design"as a banner of his theory.

ETTORE SOTTSASS

"For me the design is a way to discuss life"

Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007) was an Italian architect and designer of the late 20th century. His designs included furniture, jewellery, glass, lighting and office machine design.

Navigating between architecture, industrial design and experimental design, Ettore Sottsass occupies a very important place on the Italian establishment. 
Committed intellectual, free-spirited and non-conformist, he has to be at the heart of cultural movements of his time, ensuring continuity until the creation of Memphis in 1981. 
Alternately designer, architect, ceramist, photographer or designer, he explored the creative fields with great freedom.

After the trauma of war, Ettore Sottsass participated in the reconstruction of the social housing programs. 
Convinced that architecture can not be decreed from above, he stopped for a time to exercise architecture. Failing to realize the architecture of his dreams, he prefers designing architectured objects.
With his curiosity, he worked for a lot of fields as painting, as graphic design, furniture design, jewelery and ceramics; these practices feeding each other according to the principle of «cross fertilization». 



45 Synthesis:
Typist and back office with 2 storage boxes
72 x 160 x 75 cm

Back 68 x 126 x 48 cm

In the 70s, convinced that we must work on a «desktop profile», Ettore Sottsass is attempting to redefine the face of the workplace. 
Considering as archaic or hierarchical distinctive signs, the differences are, he says, come from space and tools required by those who work. 
He developed a modular system of simple elements, which can vary in size, numbers and colors. 
45 Synthesis strangely akin to the principle of «Habitat profiles» imagined a year ago as part of the exhibition Italy : The New Domestic Landscape.

Modernism(2)_MyriemMsefer_11/06/2016

MODERNISM

GENERAL INDRODUCTION

Modernism is the name given to the new forms that appeared in all of the arts-in painting, sculpture, architecture, music and litterature.

After the first world war, Europeans struggled to find a design direction that would be a true expression of the twentieth century a truly modern design. 
The leaders of modernism were revolutionnaries not directly connected connected with politics. 
Modernism, in general, includes the activities and creations of those who felt the traditional forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, philosophy, social organization, activities of daily life, and even the sciences, were becoming ill-fitted to their tasks and outdated in the new economic, social, and political environment of an emerging fully industrialized world. 
4 Architects are regarded as pioneers of modernism in design as they defined new directions with such clarity and force that they can be thought of as the originators of the ‘Modern Movment’
- Walter Gropuis (1881-1969)
- Ludwing Mies Van der Rohe (1886-1969)
- Le  Corbusier (1887-1965)
- Franl Lloyd Wright
Their works were discribed as being in the intrnational style.

WALTER GROPIUS : 

Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (1883 – 1969) was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture.

«Architecture begins where the engineering ends»

It is a kind of mini-campus, students are housed on site.

The building has several entrances, there is never a single view of the building. We must go around the Bauhaus to understand its shape (reference to the Robie House by Frank Lloyd Wright) .

The building consists of two shaped body «L» giving it a dynamism, a form tending toward the rotation. This form rayon relative to a landscape .

There are principles of transparency but still mass notion .

The notion of dissolved angle , the angle is fully glazed .

The facades are detached from the structure that is internal. 

Circulation spaces are between the structure and the facade.

The windows of the building students also have shaped openings «L» , one always finds this concept of dynamism.

CHAIR BY WALTER GROPIUS

CHAIR BY WALTER GROPIUS

LE CORBUSIER

Le Corbusier, (1887 – 1965), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now called modern architecture. 
He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930. His career spanned five decades, with his buildings constructed throughout Europe, India, and the Americas.

Le Corbusier’s Five Points of Architecture

During his career, Le Corbusier developed a set of architectural principles that dictated his technique, which he called «the Five Points of a New Architecture» and were most evident in his Villa Savoye. The five points are:

Pilotis – Replacement of supporting walls by a grid of reinforced concrete columns that bears the structural load is the basis of the new aesthetic.

The free designing of the ground plan—the absence of supporting walls—means the house is unrestrained in its internal use.

The free design of the façade—separating the exterior of the building from its structural function—sets the façade free from structural constraints.

The horizontal window, which cuts the façade along its entire length, lights rooms equally.

Roof gardens on a flat roof can serve a domestic purpose while providing essential protection to the concrete roof.

La Villa Savoye

It was Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (1929–1931) that most succinctly summed up his five points of architecture that he had elucidated in his book Vers une architecture, which he had been developing throughout the 1920s. First, Le Corbusier lifted the bulk of the structure off the ground, supporting it by pilotis – reinforced concrete stilts. These pilotis, in providing the structural support for the house, allowed him to elucidate his next two points: a free façade, and an open floor plan. The second floor of the Villa Savoye includes long strips of ribbon windows that allow unencumbered views of the large surrounding yard, and constitute the fourth point of his system. The fifth point was the roof garden to compensate for the green area consumed by the building and replacing it on the roof. A ramp rising from ground level to the third floor roof terrace allows for an architectural promenade through the structure.

ArtNouveau(2)_MyriemMsefer_11/06/2016

ART NOUVEAU 

GENERAL INDRODUCTION

Art Nouveau is an international artistic movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century which highlights on the aesthetics of curved lines and organic forms.
It was seen in art, graphic design, architecture and applied arts such as decoration, jewellery, ceramics and glass.
The French term «Art Nouveau» has emerged in Britain, along with Anglomania in France has spread the form Modern Style in the early twentieth century,
Art Nouveau is characterized by the inventiveness, the presence of rhythms, colors, ornamentation inspired by trees, flowers, insects, animals, and introducing sensitive in the everyday decor. 
In art nouveau, we can find a lot of big names of Architecture: 

- Victor Horta, Brussels - The hotel Tassel 
- Domenech i Montaner, Barcelona - Palau de la Musica
- Antoni Gaudi, Barclone -  Palau Guell, Guell Pavilions, Casa Vicens, Belles Guard, Casa Mila, Casa Batllo, Segrada familia.
-Hector Guimard - Metro Station Paris

CASA BATLLO

Casa Batlló is one of the most renowned buildings of Antoni Gaudí. It is located in the very center of Barcelona. 

Like everything Gaudí designed, it is only identifiable as Modernisme or Art Nouveau in the broadest sense. The ground floor, in particular, has unusual tracery, irregular oval windows and flowing sculpted stone work. 

There are few straight lines, and much of the façade is decorated with a colorful mosaic made of broken ceramic tiles. The roof is arched and was likened to the back of a dragon or dinosaur. 

A common theory about the building is that the rounded feature to the left of centre, terminating at the top in a turret and cross, represents the lance of Saint George, which has been plunged into the back of the dragon.

Ceiling

Facade

Facade

Stairs

HECTOR GUIMARD 

When Hector Guimard was commissioned to design these famous subway station gates, Paris was only the second city in the world (after London) to have constructed an underground railway. Guimard’s design answered the desire to celebrate and promote this new infrastructure with a bold structure that would be clearly visible on the Paris streetscape.
The gate utilizes the sinuous, organic forms that are so typical of the Art Nouveau style, yet while it appears at first to be a single component, it is in fact made up of several parts that could be easily mass produced in Paris.
In effect, Guimard had concealed an aspect of the object’s modernity beneath its soft forms, a strategy that is symptomatic of Art Nouveau’s ambivalent attitude to the modern age. Ironically, perhaps, Guimard’s design was instrumental in popularizing Art Nouveau, and making the style an important early stage in the evolution of modernist design.