Word: milan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Whether turning out sleek cameras or sophisticated cars, Italy has been the acknowledged capital of industrial design for a decade. Products penciled on Milan drawing boards seem to appear in museum collections even before they reach the assembly line. Now, thanks to a furniture group called Memphis, Milan is also the focus of the design world's hot new controversy...
...project with half a dozen young followers. His oddly hued, plastic-laminate-covered Carlton room divider, whose bookshelves extend at eccentric angles, is intentionally haphazard-looking. Since books tend to settle on an incline anyway, reasoned Sottsass, why force them to stand at attention? With a core committee in Milan, Sottsass informally reviews proposals and commissions plans from like-minded designers. "We are explorers out in unmapped places," he says. "We are not trying to define truth. We just want to keep exploring...
...Memphis quest, claims Sottsass, "implies an optimism that the body is always winning. The puritanical, Catholic approach of 'less is more' is wrong because we know that all Catholics are sinners." Yet Sottsass's domestic décor is far more spartan than hedonistic. His Milan apartment and office are simply furnished, with plain tables and black plastic chairs. Says he: "I have to be free of any outside information to concentrate. I would like to live in a monastery...
Will Memphis' innovation trickle down from the trendy heights? The one who seems least curious is Sottsass. "We are not designing for eternity. For me obsolescence is just the sugar of life." With the orders picking up in Milan, the immediate future of Memphis looks sweet indeed. -By J.D. Reed. Reported by Roberto Suro/Milan
...undertaken one of his better-known leftist carnivals. Accidental Death of an Anarchist, written in 1970, is based on the actual case of an Italian anarchist named Giuseppe Pinelli. Accused of terrorism, Pinelli is said to have jumped to his death from the fourth-floor window of Milan police headquarters. Fo suspected, and a later investigation proved, that Pinelli was pushed out the window by the police...