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. 

Welcome to Walden 7, the Utopia in Barcelona!

Walden 7 is not only an exceptional example of Spanish contemporary architecture, but also one of the most innovative and distinguished residential buildings of the 20th century.
This experimental apartment block, located at the edge of Barcelona in Sant Just Desvern, was designed and built on a very low-budget in 1974 by Ricard Bofill’s team.  Bofill, an accomplished Catalan architect, also designed many of the apartments which housed the Olympic athletes in 1992.  One of his most recent works is the W Hotel (Hotel Vela) which was established in 2008.
The name of the building is inspired by B.F.Skinner’s science-fiction novel, Walden Two, which depicts a utopian community and  emulates the simple living and self-sufficiency that Henry David Thoreau practiced at Walden Pond . The building consists of 18 separate towers with a total of 446 apartments, formed by modules of 30 square meters in size. The smallest is a studio, made of only 1 module, and the largest is a 2-story apartment, made up of 4.

Built where there had previously been a cement factory, Walden-7 has ample public space for sports and recreation, bars and restaurants on the ground floor, and swimming pools on the roofs.

baubauhaus:How has the Bauhaus movement influenced you?

To start with the topic today about Bauhaus, I'd like to show everybody one of my favourite website: www.baubauhaus.com 
Please don't hesitate to give it a click. In this website, they have good taste about Graphic Design&Photography. (example shown below)

 It would be an understatement to say that the current state of the graphic design industry owes a lot to the Bauhaus movement. With modern design’s intrinsic nature as a combination of art and industry, we owe much to this ragtag German design school that persevered throughout a tough time of social and political upheaval to leave one of the biggest stamps on art, architecture and design in the 20th century.

The Bauhaus School (literally meaning ‘building house’ in German) was founded in 1919 by Walter Groupius in Weimar, then the capital of post WWI Germany. In this era of change and disillusionment, the movement sought to embrace 20th century machine culture in a way that allowed basic necessities like buildings, furniture, and design, to be completed in a utilitarian but affective way.

The school encouraged the embrace of modern technologies in order to succeed in a modern environment. The most basic tenet of the Bauhaus was form follows function.

A Trip to Horta Museum, Brussels (art nouveau)

I had a weekend trip to Brussels two years ago. As a genuine Art Nouveau lover, the Horta Museum has been high on my wish list for quite some time. Thanks to that trip I finally got to visit the former house and atelier of Belgian Art Nouveau architect Victor Horta (6 January 1861 – 8 September 1947).

I found some pics I took in this amazing beautiful house to show you, hopefully they will convince you to travel to Brussels and visit this inspiring museum yourself.

The first picture I want to show you is of the skylight above the stairwell. I have seen pictures from this angle in many books, but I never understood what I was looking at. Now that I have visited the museum, I finally understand: The ‘opening’ on the left side is actually a mirror reflecting the mirror on the opposite site, creating a seemingly endless space.

The house was designed in a – for those days – innovative way. Horta created a variety of perspectives and sought to allow light to circulate. He simplified supporting structures through the use of metal arches, tie-beams and girders, all of which were unconcealed. The structures and decor were closely linked.

I just loved the color of the walls in the bedroom of Simone, Horta’s daughter. It gave me a warm, Mediterranean feel.

The academic system which dominated art education from the 17th to the 19th century, underpinned the widespread belief that media such as painting and sculpture were superior to crafts such as furniture design and silver-smithing. The consequence, many believed, was the neglect of good craftsmanship. Art Nouveau artists wanted to overturn that belief, creating a “total work of art,” or “Gesamtkunstwerk”, which resulted in buildings and interiors where every element partook in the same visual vocabulary. Horta’s house is a perfect example of a “total work of art”. Since it was his own house, he could put all his creative energy in the design and he was not limited by the budget or tast of his customer. Horta applied new techniques and materials and paid attention to every little detail.

In 1932 King Albert I of Belgium conferred on Horta the title of Baron for his services to architecture; four of the buildings Horta designed have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And also Horta’s current ‘neighbours’ are proud of what he achieved as this graffiti is clearly a tribute to a highly respected artist.

William Morris' Wallpaper Design

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

                                                                                                            -William Morris

William Morris was a designer, artist, poet, writer and Socialist in England in the 1800s.  He is considered the father-figure of the Arts and Crafts movement and had a great impact on 20th century design.  He was committed to renewal of the arts and wanted to make aesthetically pleasing and beautifully crafted things available to as many people as possible for use in all areas of life.  He grew up in a wealthy family and as a child, rode his pony through Epping Forest in a small suit of armor given to him by his father.  He spent hours studying plants, birds and nearby churches.  Nature is a huge influence on his designs.  He was an early forerunner of modern environmentalism.  Although this is the only building he ever commissioned, he is credited with over 600 designs.  

He excelled at designing tapestries, textiles, wallpaper, rugs, stained glass and hand painted tiles and furniture.  

In this article I want to show some his beautiful wallpaper design. 

He began designing wallpapers in the 1860s which were hand printed by Jeffrey & Co. in London using wood blocks and mineral based natural pigments. Along with other designers, most notably John Henry Dearle, Morris created stunningly beautiful wallpapers with complex rhythms and movement which seemed to capture the randomness and symmetry of nature.

These same designs are produced today by machine, using surface or ‘flexographic’ rollers and modern inks at our factory in Loughborough, England, giving the appearance of the block-printed originals. Enduring favourites are sometimes given a contemporary twist by the Morris & Co. studio, and lesser known wallpapers may receive a new lease of life, creating classics for the future. Other designs, previously only found on textiles, have been translated into wallpaper, sometimes printed on Gravure machines to replicate the fine tonal textures and ‘watercolour’ effects found in Morris’s fabrics.

You can find them still available today from Sanderson & Sons and Liberty of London.