Interior designers Kate Hayes and Krista Sharif have created Brite Bodies, a debut collection of colourful furniture informed by the work of creatives including Vivienne Westwood and Ettore Sottsass.

Brite Bodies comprises 11 designs and is the first furniture range from the eponymous Atlanta-based studio, which was co-founded by Hayes and Sharif.

Featuring coffee and martini tables as well as home accessories such as candlesticks and ornamental obelisks, the brightly-coloured collection takes cues from the work of some of Hayes and Sharif's favourite creatives.

The Vivienne Pedestal is a handmade wooden side table painted in a pink and red geometric pattern that pays homage to the post-modern punk plaid and tartan prints of British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood.

Two half-moon shaped plaster coffee tables are paired together to form a circle designed to resemble a Necco Wafer. Called Abbott, the tables are informed by the retro spirit of Eleanor Abbott's 1940s board game Candy Land.

"The name Brite Bodies is a kaleidoscopic nod to the luminous mediums of expression that influence everything we do and make," Sharif told Dezeen.

"Brite Bodies seeks to reinterpret the bold spirit of some of our favourite artists, designers, authors and musicians – from the playful maximalism of Ettore Sottsass to the planetary watercolour illustrations found in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince," continued the designer.

Hayes and Sharif's design process stemmed from their shared love of heirlooms. The pair also described the work of 1980s Italian design and architecture collective the Memphis Group as central to the Brite Bodies collection.

Having crafted the collection during the spring of 2020 as the world went into lockdowns due to coronavirus, the designers said that Brite Bodies features themes of "escapism" and "transcendence."

Colour and pattern are at the heart of the furniture collection, which features a range of motifs including monochrome criss-cross patterns and blocks of bright yellow.

"Using plaster, resin, wood and brass as material inspiration, the collection involved a trial-and-error process before we landed on the final designs," explained Sharif.

"A selection of pieces are surface or hand-painted a viscerally vibrant pop art hue, from citron yellow to cotton candy pink," said Hayes.

"It was really important that we get the right shades for each piece and this took some time to achieve."

"The beauty of the collection is that the pieces can exist and live on their own or be paired and partnered for optimal effect," added Sharif.

When designing Brite Bodies, Hayes and Sharif were also intent on engaging the local Atlanta artisan community in the process.

A portion of the proceeds from each Brite Bodies sale is donated to Drawchange, a non-profit organisation that is dedicated to empowering low-income and impoverished children through art therapy programmes.

Other recent designs using bright pops of colour include hot pink chairs by Moisés Hernández that are coloured with natural dye made from crushed insects, and a mint green and burgundy co-working space in Montreal by Ivy Studio.

Images are courtesy of Brite Bodies.

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Designers including Adam Nathaniel Furman, Richard Hutten and Paola Navone have created seven laminated furniture designs for Italian brand De Rosso that reimagine both archival pieces and previously unpublished works.

The limited collection saw De Rosso task five designers with reinterpreting objects from the company's archive, or updating pieces that already existed but hadn't been published up until now.

Joining Furman, Hutten and Navone is Italian artist Ugo Nespolo and French designer Martine Bedin, who was a founding member of the Memphis Group in the 1980s.

Each of the designs have been brought to life as renders before they are produced as one-off pieces.

Together, the five creatives designed a bookcase, two chairs, two tables and two sideboards, each reflecting the personal style of their creator, but united by the same "exuberant use of colour".

This is in keeping with De Rosso's design language, which the company describes as a crossover of pop art, the Alchimia movement and the Memphis movement.

"The main aim was to celebrate the heritage and flair of the company while also adding the right design and designers to blend and continue it in the future," said company consultant Massimo De Conti.

Made in collaboration with laminate brand Abet Laminati, each of the limited edition furniture items is made from high-pressure decorative laminate, with the exception of the bookcase by Bedin, which also incorporates Belgian black marble.

Bedin's Slate bookcase is constructed from pieces of laminate that have been made into cubic boxes and stacked on top of each other, with longer sections of the material being used to form shelves and a base.

While some of the boxes have been printed with bold, block colours, others feature animated patterns resembling marbling-ink effects.

Furman designed the Chomp chair and the Lounge Hog coffee table for De Rosso, which both boast "zoomorphic" shapes and bright hues of pink, green, yellow, orange, purple and blue.

With a backrest and seat made up of two sections of laminate that have been cut along one edge to resemble sharp teeth, the Chomp chair playfully imitates a fictional monster that is "ready to bite whoever sits down".

The Lounge Hog table, on the other hand, is modelled after a hedgehog, with a tabletop shaped like the round, spiky body of the animal.

Dutch designer Hutten was responsible for redesigning the S.E.C. chair, introducing new patterns and colours to the archival item.

The chair is made out of a single cubic form that has had another square cut out of its top to create a seat. This is covered with a striped laminate featuring gradiated colours of brown, orange, yellow and blue.

This design has been created in five different "kaleidoscopic" colourways.

Italian designer Navone created two "ironic" sideboards, titled Watermelon and Meraviglia, the latter of which is a brand new design, while the other is a reinterpretation of an archival piece.

One of the objects looks just as its name indicates, with bright rouge-tinted cupboards dotted with black seed-like shapes, and green-hued sides and top surface striped with a darker shade of the same colour.

The other furniture piece boasts more pared-back colours of silver and pale blue, and has doors that are punctuated with rows of uniform holes.

Italian artist Nespolo created a brand new design for De Rosso – the Febo table, which has a simple structure but is printed with loud "pop graphics" featuring geometric shapes and miscellaneous objects like trumpets, locks, pens and cacti.

Each piece is a collectors item designed for the domestic environment, and can be placed on its own or in a group to create "an exhilarating presence" in the home.

Furman has previously collaborated with Abet Laminati to create three furniture designs for Camp Design Gallery, which similarly feature vivid colours and bold, intricate patterns made using digitally printed laminate.

At Dezeen's Virtual Design Festival, the designer coined the term "New London Fabulous" to describe the movement of designers, including himself, who have overcome the bias against using colour, pattern and ornament.

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This modular chair collection by Thai design studio Kaoi takes cues from the 1980s Memphis Group, featuring four graphic armrests that can be mixed and matched to offer different aesthetic "personalities".

Designed in collaboration with THINKK studio, Kaoi's Ebba chair collection is composed of three deckchair-style seats that can be brought to life with four variations of armrests.

The two Bangkok-based studios channelled the geometric lines that defined the 1980s Memphis movement founded by Italian architect and designer Ettore Sottsass.

Taking their titles after typically Danish names, the armrests – Han, Somma, Franz, and Mujoel – boast bold forms in the shape of squiggles, zigzags and arcs reminiscent of the confetti-like pattern called Bacterio that Sottsass designed in 1978.

The Memphis collective was born in 1980 during a meeting at Sottsass' Milan apartment with fellow designers Michele de Lucchi, George Sowden, Martine Bedin, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Marco Zanini and Matteo Thun.

In founding Memphis, Sottsass' intention was to define a new approach to design that broke free of the restrictions of functionalism.

The group's name is allegedly taken from the 1966 Bob Dylan track titled Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again, which was played throughout the group's meeting.

"Each of the different styles was designed to portray a variety of personalities," explained Kaoi studio. "From gentle, simple lines to super playful and fun curves."

These shapes are paired with vibrant hues including buttercup yellow, midnight indigo, olive green and shiny chromium.

The designers found colour inspiration in a Philippe Starck quote: "You create your own decoration. You choose your colour, you choose your mood. If you are depressed, you put some bright yellow and suddenly you are happy."

Each of the different components of the chair – its armrests, seat and pillow – can be mixed and matched according to the user's personal taste.
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"We wanted to create a design that would allow the customer to freely mix and match and recreate their own chair based on their individual personality, because we believe that design defines you better than you define yourself," the studio told Dezeen.

This is the first time Kaoi, which was founded at the beginning of January 2020, has worked with Bangkok-based THINKK studio.

The Ebba chair collection was showcased as part of the THINKK Together exhibition that was held during Bangkok Design Week 2020, which tasked 21 designers with answering the question "Why do we need another chair?".

THINKK studio has previously created a contemporary furniture collection called Made In Thailand, which is designed to "present an unorthodox overview of contemporary Thai design and manufacturing".

Each of the nine furniture and homeware items boasts a modern and minimal aesthetic while still incorporating traditional manufacturing techniques and materials like bamboo and wicker.

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From millennial pink bathrooms to totems in clashing multi-colours, maximalist design is on the rise, says Claire Bingham, author of More is More. Here she picks out five contemporary designers piling on the pattern.

Spanning the worlds of interiors, furniture, fashion, and graphics, the book More is More: Memphis, Maximalism, and New Wave Design, explores how the maximalist aesthetic continues to shape the current creative scene.

"The book is a celebration of design that feels happy," said Bingham. "This is design that goes beyond the comfort zone. It makes you smile."

The recent resurgence of maximalism started with the craze for millennial pink, a baby pink shade that dominated at Milan design week in 2017, and has developed to embrace a full brightly coloured palette.

"The sweet-shop colours, terrazzo floors, and curved cartoon shapes have been given a black outline and made graphic," said Bingham.

Bingham charts the history of maximalism back to the rule-breaking Memphis Group – the postmodern 1980s Italian design and architecture founded by Ettore Sottsass.

But she demonstrates that the maximalist aesthetic and "high-low combination of materials and styles" has been embraced by many contemporary creatives.

"Hello-there hues, vive la différence mindset, and flamboyant creativity – all hopefully, in the teeth of good taste," she said. "It's more than a style, it's an attitude."

The colourful, highly patterned look has been recently applied to interiors, furniture, and fashion, as well as graphics.

"In the book, the idea was to look back to design of the 1980s, specifically Memphis and see how that's shaping the love for all things maximal right now," she continued.

"It's multi-patterned, highly individual and no shapes-barred. The designers and projects featured embrace a freewheeling and curious spirit that characterised the original Memphis mood."

See below for Bingham's pick of five designers pushing maximal design:

Sasha Bikoff

"If there was any designer to sum up the adage: 'more is more', Sasha Bikoff is it. She recently completed a project for the Kips Bay Decorator Show House on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that is megawatt happy. It scatters colour and pattern like confetti and to me, is everything that maximalism is about.

"Yes, it is the antithesis of minimalism – there's an awful lot of design going on here but more than that, it's Bikoff's ability to combine so many opposing, complicated elements.

"For all its design credentials, the scheme projects strength and confidence. Faced with the challenge of designing a staircase in the townhouse rather than a reception room, Sasha owned it and decided to do crazy beautiful regardless of the tricky space."

Jaime Hayon

"In the years since he founded his eponymous design studio, Spanish designer Jaime Hayon has created work for the likes of Cassina, Fritz Hansen, Bisazza and Baccarat – as well as interiors for leading hotels, restaurants and retail spaces.

"No stranger to Memphis or maximalism, his distinguishable whimsical and colourful style, stacked totem shapes and dazzling patterns makes him a modern day Alessandro Mendini.

"He is daring – and this has always influenced his attitude and creativity. At his interior for La Terraza del Casino in Madrid, guests are greeted by Hayon's characterful tropes. In this space, eyes, noses, ears and mouths are drawn into the lamps, trolleys and tableware. Known for his recurring use of figurative shapes, the building is literally smiling back."

Schneid Studio

"With German studio Schneid, what's really nice is the detail. With their candy-drop Junit pendants they incite even the most cautious to get creative with lighting.

"Evolving the taste for industrial-style bare bulbs with their interchangeable, stacked, geometric shapes, they have married simplicity with character, instilling personality into an object that fits with the playful spirit of Memphis design. For a closet maximalist, this is a lovely way to add interest to a room – on a daintier scale."

George Sowden

"Originally from Leeds, George Sowden has been a Milanese native for almost five decades. Recognised for his Memphis colour-blocked and geometric designs such as the Saragoza chair and long-legged D'Antibes cabinet designed in 1981, he switched this aesthetic to all manner of objects from his zigzag-shaped lighting, clocks, and textiles.

"Think of 1980s motifs and his abstract patterns in bold, clashing colours is where it all began. His life as a product designer was nurtured by Memphis and continues today with products such as the colourful, covetable Coffee and Softbrew Teapot for Danish design company HAY and the Bertie Bassett-like Zeta table for British company Another Brand.

"With so much personality embedded in his designs, why have a plain side table, when you can choose this?"

Bethan Laura Wood

"British designer Bethan Laura Wood is one of my maximalist faves. From her bags with a toothpaste-y handle produced for Italian leather goods brand Valextra to her collaboration with fashion designer Peter Pilotto at his townhouse last year, she has a unique way of seeing things and is extremely present in everything she does.

"What sets Wood apart is her curiosity and desire to experiment with materials, resulting in objects that are a feast for the senses. Laminate is a main connector between her work and Memphis. She shares the Memphis Group's affinity for working with materials that are known within one industry and then using them in another.

"Colour, pattern and new technologies – all of this is something she likes to grapple with every day in modern design. Boring she is not."

Main image Image courtesy of Sasha Bikoff Interior Design/Nicole Cohen.

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The latest Dezeen competition offers readers the chance to win one of 10 vases by British designer Jack Laverick.

This competition is now closed. Congratulations to the winners, which are Jodie Green from Rugeley, England, Guy Gunstone from Wokingham, England, Stephen Hutton from Dundee, Scotland, Silvia Prizzi from Oxfordshire, England, Emily Davies, from London, England, Freya Bradbury from Cornwall, England, Fran Light, from Hampshire, England, Scott Keenan from Lutterworth, England, Pete Savage from London, England, and Ann Collerson, England.

See more competitions with great prizes currently on Dezeen ›

Called Memphis, the collection pays tribute to the designs of the Memphis Group, led by postmodernist designer Ettore Sottsass.

It includes an assortment of pots and vases that are designed to be simple yet functional. They are available in three patterns, called shapes, speckle and grid. There are also three colours: white, blush and baby blue.

All the items are hand-crafted by Laverick, a 26-year-old ceramicist, using porcelain – a ceramic made by heating materials in a kiln to very high temperatures of between 1,200 and 1,400 degrees Celsius.

As a result, all the items are extremely smooth to the touch and water-tight.

A graduate from the Leek College of Art, Laverick began his career by using porcelain to make hand-made buttons.

Since then, his range has developed to consist of slip-cast porcelain items including tea-light holders, planters and pots.

This year, alongside his father and under the name Laverick & Son, Laverick also launched a range of translucent porcelain lighting.

Ten readers will each win a pot or vase of their choice from the Memphis collection, which is also available to buy online.

Competition closes 23 November 2018. 10 winners will be selected at random and notified by email, and their names will be published at the top of this page.

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Ettore Sottsass' Memphis designs join eccentric contemporary furnishings that decorate a townhouse in New York's Soho for this installation.

Open for the month of May, the Raquel's Dream House pop-up is the brainchild of art collector Raquel Cayre.

The residence at 79 Greene Street has been furnished in the style of Cayre's Instagram account @ettoresottsass, which pays homage to Sottsass – the late Italian architect and renowned protagonist of the Memphis Group.

As with the social media account, the four-storey house features items created from the 1980s design movement. These are placed alongside contemporary pieces that reference the style, which is recognisable for bright colours, asymmetric shapes, and use of plastic.

"Through the Dream House, I brought my digital feed to life with works by Ettore Sottsass, Daniel Buren, Memphis Milano, Gaetano Pesce, Max Lamb, Bower Studios and many more infilling the Soho townhouse," Cayre told Dezeen.

Among the Sottsass creations that visitors to the house will find is the Carlton room divider. Designed in 1981, it comprises a series of colourful geometric shapes stacked on top of one another to form a partition, a bookcase and chest of drawers.

Sottsass' multi-functional piece is located on the ground floor, where designer Al Freeman's squishy green lighter, yellow pencil and pink medicine bottle artworks are mounted on the wall.

Launched last year, Freeman's pieces join a number of contemporary designs on this level, like a white sofa comprised of different sections so that it curves, a large papier-mache sculpture featuring a face, and a set of stripy black and white columns.

Cayre has brought in more designs by Sottsass on the first floor, including a mirror with a curvy pink plastic frame and the Enorme Telephone – a black phone with blocks of red and yellow.

The architect's Bay Lamp is also set atop the Peninsula Table by US artist Peter Shire, who completed the piece in 1982, building the table top on legs of different colours and shapes.

Two throne-like red polyurethane resin and plastic chairs by Gaetano Pesce, cartoonish paper pulp chairs by Thomas Barger, and fluffy seats by Fernando and Humberto Campana are among other standout designs.

On the remaining two levels is a red sofa that resembles a pair of lips designed by Studio65 and produced by Gufram, mirrors that look like archways that were recently launched by Bower Studios, and three sculptural chairs made of polystyrene and metal by Max Lamb.

Raquel's Dream House came about after Cayre visited the Greene Street residence. She decided that its white-painted walls and weathered black-painted wooden flooring were a suitable and unusual blank canvas for the bold pieces.

She then called upon the contributors, designers and artists to source the range of works.

"I saw the space by chance, conceived the idea last minute, then worked to bring the idea to life with a range of leading New York design forces including: Friedman Benda, Urban Architecture Inc, Bortolami Gallery, Ralph Pucci, R & Company, Studio Proba, Salon 94 Design, 56 Henry, and Coming Soon New York," said Cayre.

The curator believes the project offers an alternative approach to exhibiting design and artwork outside of galleries. "It's a month-long initiative that re-examines traditional methods of presenting, viewing, and experiencing design, as well as its corresponding modes of display," she continued.

Raquel's Dream House forms part of a major resurgence of interest in the Memphis movement, which began a few years ago and continues today. Designer Camille Walala has recreated the style's bold patterns as large murals, including a recently completed graphic covering a building in Brooklyn.

Design studios Masquespacio and MPGMB are among other to have also recently used the aesthetic in projects over the past couple of years.

Sottsass kicked off the Memphis movement alongside designers Alessandro Mendini, Michael Graves, Nathalie Du Pasquier and more at the Salone del Mobile in Milan in 1982. Featuring geometric shapes and bright colours, the pieces were first developed in reaction to the functional aesthetics of modernism.

Among the host of notable collectors of the postmodern style was the late musician David Bowie, whose collection of over 100 pieces went on auction last year at Sotheby's.

Photography is by Nicole Cohen.

Project credits:

Contributors: Friedman Benda, Urban Architecture Inc, Bortolami Gallery, Ralph Pucci, R & Company, Studio Proba, Bower Studios, Salon 94 Design, 56 Henry and Coming Soon New York.

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Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum has cancelled a major retrospective of work by Memphis group founder Ettore Sottsass, blaming the architects' representatives for attempting to "dictate" its curation.

The retrospective, which would have been the first overview of the Italian designer to take place in the Netherlands, was meant to open this Spring.

However, Sottsass' relatives and representatives withdrew their agreement to loan works to the museum, following lengthy discussions regarding the exhibition content and layout. They also denied permission to allow the publication of Sottsass' texts.

"I regret that the museum felt compelled to take this decision," said Stedelijk interim director Jan Willem Sieburgh.  "We were looking forward to working with heirs to produce an exceptional, public-friendly exhibition about Ettore Sottsass. Months of discussions, however, proved fruitless."

"As a museum, we cannot and will not allow the way in which we conceive our exhibitions to be dictated to us," he continued. "Heirs and the gallery owner gave too little scope for interpretations we wished to explore in the presentation."

Curators and Sottsass' relatives disagreed on exhibition format

Curators at the museum planned to present the work of the Italian designer thematically, as opposed to the standard chronological format.

They also wanted to combine work from different decades and disciplines, as well as display works by other Memphis group members to illustrate Sottsass' influence on younger designers – claiming that this did not match the vision outlined by the Sottsass estate.

"After communicating about the show already for over a year without any problem, several disagreements arose," curator Ingeborg de Roode told Dezeen. "The widow of Sottsass, Barbara Radice, wanted us to change our exhibition concept because of these."

"The first disagreement was about the fact that we wanted to show the work in themes instead of a chronological order, which was done in most overviews about Sottsass. "The second disagreement was about our desire to show the inspirational role Sottsass played for younger designers, especially during the Memphis period."

Sottsass relatives brand museum's statement "misleading"

But a statement issued today, 23 January 2018, by his widow Barbara Radice and close friend Ernest Mourmans, described the museum's claims as "misleading".

"Rather than enter into a constructive dialogue, for the past few months the curator chose to conduct the conversation about this exhibition in an adversarial and divisive fashion," read the statement. "In that spirit, she also refused to detail her curatorial outline of the exhibition and her choice of works until a late date."

"At that point, the estate could only either relent to pressure or seek a dialogue to balance Sottsass' spirit and legacy with a museum team that had done little research and was more interested in the public relations aspect of the exhibition."

The Stedelijk currently owns 80 works by Sottsass itself, as well as a large number of the Memphis archives from Sottsass' personal collection, including design sketches, posters, catalogues and textile samples from the young designers who worked with him.

Despite this, the museum did not want to carry on the retrospective without the cooperation of the Sottsass representatives.

"Although the Stedelijk owns work that represents the entire spectrum of Sottsass' oeuvre – 80 objects in total, and numerous museums and collectors had agreed to loan works – the museum feels that it cannot justifiably allow the exhibition to proceed without the cooperation of heirs and the gallery owner," they said.

"From 1968 until the death of the designer in 2007, the Stedelijk maintained a close personal relationship with Sottsass. In recent years, the museum acquired seminal pieces from his oeuvre, ranging from a Superbox cabinet produced in the late 1960s, to Vase no. 10 which dates from 2006," they continued.

Research carried out on behalf of the exhibition will be shared with the public through other outlets, according to the museum.

A key figure in postmodernism, Sottsass formed the Milan-based Memphis group in 1980 at the age of 60.  Other members include Michele De Lucchi, Martine Bedin and Nathalie du Pasquier.

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Italian architecture office 2A+P/A has brought an Ettore Sottsass painting to life to create a black barrel-roofed pavilion for an architecture festival in Orléans, France.

The Rome-based architects took the axonometric watercolour painting of an arched building with irregular windows made by Sottsass and used it as a basis for their structure.

Sottsass, the renowned Italian architect and designer who founded the Memphis group, made hundreds of sketches throughout his life. Some were later made into objects or buildings and some exist purely as art works.

"In the very mysterious yet highly expressive appearance of Architettura Monumentale we recognised a tacit potential waiting to be developed," said 2A+P/A founders Gianfranco Bombaci and Matteo Costanzo.

"The chance to open a dialogue with Ettore Sottsass and start a collaboration beyond the limits of time and life."

The architects backwards engineered a design for the building, imagining what the other two sides of the structure not shown in the sketch could look like, and how an interior glimpsed only briefly through the windows of Sottsass' picture should be laid out.

"The key was to introduce an abstract yellow structure of columns and beams in the black shell," explained the architects.

"The new element has a rigid geometry and yet reacts to the curve of the ceiling constructing a free but interdependent relationship with the vault."

The yellow grid alludes to several stories and rooms but remains abstract from the outer shell, referencing how Sottsass' drawing shows little correlation between the windows and where floors could logically sit. Earlier models for the work allowed for a series of galleries to run around the exterior wall, connected by staircases.

For the first Biennale d'Architecture d'Orléans, 2A+P/A built a reduced version of its design as a pavilion to host an art exhibition curated by the architects.

The structure is formed from prefabricated wooden panels that were durable yet quick and easy to assemble on location, in a town square.

Called the Cabinet of Curiosities, the interior walls have been covered in 36 drawings like a "fresco" that forms "a visual essay that exposes our idea of architecture in its intimate form".

The biennale runs until 18 March 2018, after which the pavilion will be moving to a permanent location in the Parc Floral close to Orléans, where it will continue to host exhibitions and function as a venue for future biennales.

After the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo five local architects created pavilions that double as galleries to sit in the ground of the Alvaro Siza-designed Serralves Foundation in Porto, Brazil.

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Dezeen hosted a panel discussion with Sonos on the impact of the Memphis movement, and its lasting influence on art and design.

On the panel was Deyan Sudjic, the director of London's Design Museum and British designer Adam Nathaniel Furman, who recently designed a series of Memphis-inspired archways during London Design Festival.

The Memphis movement was formed in 1980 after designers Ettore Sottsass, Alessandro Mendini, Michael Graves and Nathalie Du Pasquier amongst others debuted pieces at the Salone del Mobile in Milan the following year. As a reaction against the functional aesthetics of modernism, the designs of the Memphis group often featured geometric shapes and bright colours.

The movement attracted several notable collectors including late musician David Bowie whose collection of over 100 pieces went on auction last year at Sotheby's.

Memphis has enjoyed a recent resurgence and has had a significant impact on contemporary designers such as Camille Walala, who designed a listening room in the London showroom of speaker manufacturer Sonos.

As part of the launch of the store, Sonos put on an exhibition with the David Bowie Estate of rare images taken by photographers such as Mick Rock and Brian Duffy.

This was the first event in a series of talks hosted by Sonos at their newly opened Covent Garden store and showroom.

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French designer and Memphis Group member Nathalie du Pasquier has created more than 50 new pieces for her first solo show in the UK in 25 years.

The From Time to Time exhibition, which is being hosted by Pace London until 29 July, features sculpture, paintings and drawings, all with the bold geometric forms and colourful contrasts that Du Pasquier's work is known for.

Her wooden sculptures resemble oversized chess pieces, and feature angular shapes reminiscent of buildings and other architectural elements. These are repeated in her still lifes.

Some of the paintings include additional 3D elements, such as doors that fold out, or grid-like sections that extend beyond the edges of the piece.

Du Pasquier has also painted graphic elements on the walls, which frame her works and echo their colours and forms.

"Through the representation, I learned about looking and transforming what I saw into a painting," said Du Pasquier. "The abstract work is a different kind of position. I become a builder, an inventor."

From Time to Time is arranged around a central red room, which is hung with some of the designer's more historic abstract paintings, often including shapes that reference domestic objects.

Du Pasquier  – who has described herself as a "painter who makes her own models" – often creates these as 3D pieces before painting them in flat colour on canvas.

"The paintings in the red room are traditional still lifes representing abstract constructions, and you do not see them when you enter the exhibition," she said.

"What you'll see, all around the space, is the recent work where I have composed abstract paintings, done in the last two years with three-dimensional elements that show the scars of time."

"What I want to show in From Time to Time is this continuous shift from one position to another," she continued" It is in that movement that I recharge the dynamo."

Du Pasquier, who is set for two more solo exhibitions later this year in London and Philadelphia, has seen a resurgence of interest in her work, along with that of the Memphis Group. The group was founded in 1982 by Ettore Sottsass.

The designer, who is self-taught, has created jewellery, furniture and textiles, although shifted her focus to painting in the late 1980s. She launched a 43-piece collection with American Apparel in 2014 which featured her graphic prints and has also created textile designs for Wrong For Hay.

Her intensely patterned Riviera carpet was also revealed to be part of David Bowie's own extensive Memphis collection when it went on sale through auction house Sotheby's last year.

Postmodernism as a whole has undergone a revival, with its bright colours and bold forms being rediscovered and reinvented.

Lee Broom recently unveiled a po-mo-inspired set of ceramics with monochrome stripes and colourful details, and Camille Walala applied her bold graphics to a collection of homeware for London's Aria design store.

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Following the news that David Bowie's secret collection of Memphis furniture is going up for sale next month, Adam Trunoske from auction house Sotheby's shares five of the most iconic pieces from the musician's personal stash.

It's now known that before his death earlier this year, Bowie was an avid yet discreet collector of works by Italian designer Ettore Sottsass and the Milan-based Memphis group.

Over the years, he had managed to acquire more than 100 pieces, including the iconic Super Lamp by Martine Bedin and Sottsass' Carlton bookcase.

Trunoske, a specialist in 20th-century design at London auction house Sotheby's, believed Bowie's connection to the design came from his attraction to things "outside of the norm".

"Memphis design and post-modernist design is something that was very groundbreaking," he told Dezeen. "When the first collection of Memphis pieces came out in 1981 in Milan, it just really brought something completely new to the design world."

"I think David Bowie was somebody who really liked and was attracted to things that were outside of the norm," he added.

"He was always kind of changing his style throughout the years and he was never quite the same person, and these pieces really reflected him because they polarised audiences when they came out."

The pieces will be auctioned at Sotheby's on 11 November 2016, with estimates ranging from £60 to £7000.

See Trunoske's picks and descriptions of the most iconic pieces below:

Radio Phonograph by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, 1966

This is a wonderful, ground-breaking piece of 1960s design. You can move the speakers, change the shape of the object, turn it into a cube. It's one of the pieces from the pop art era that totally changed the format of what a record player could look like.

Valentine portable typewriter by Ettore Sottsass and Perry King, 1969

This is one of the very first pieces of Sottsass design that Bowie bought. This portable typewriter was designed to be used anywhere apart from the office — at hand for when inspiration struck any writer, poet or lyricist.

In lipstick red, it's become one of the most emblematic design pieces of its era – examples are now in London's Victoria & Albert Museum and Design Museum as well as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Bel Air armchair by Peter Shire, 1982

This is almost an anti-chair. It's made up of many different shapes and forms. There are only a few flat lines on it, making you wonder "How am I meant to sit on that?", "Where should I sit?". It challenges traditional ideas of how a chair should be.

Cube radio by Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper, 1963

This portable radio folds up into a perfect cube. It's more of a sculpture really. Fun, practical, clever – it encapsulates everything that the Memphis group were about.

Riviera carpet by Nathalie du Pasquier, 1983

This isn't just a carpet – it's a piece of art. You can even hang it on the wall if you want to. With its visually rich colour pattern, it's almost hypnotising.

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David Bowie's extensive collection of pieces by the Memphis group is set to be auctioned in London.

Before his death earlier this year, the musician was an avid collector of works by Italian designer Ettore Sottsass and the Milan-based Memphis group.

Over the years, he had managed to acquire over 100 pieces, including the iconic Super Lamp by Martine Bedin and Sottsass' Carlton bookcase.

One hundred pieces from Bowie's collection will be sold at an auction at Sotheby's in London on 11 November 2016.

The lowest-value items are expected to go for as little as £60, while the Carlton bookcase is estimated at £7000.

"The works produced by the historical avant-garde design collaborative Memphis Milano, led by Ettore Sottsass, could not have found a more receptive and tuned-in audience than David Bowie," said Cécile Verdier, co-head of 20th-century design at Sotheby's.

"This is design with no limits and no boundaries," she added. "When you look at a piece of Memphis design, you see their unconventionality, the kaleidoscope of forms and patterns, the vibrant contrasting colours that really shouldn't work but really do."

The auction will be Sotheby's third to feature Bowie's collections since the pop star's untimely death in January. The first two, also scheduled for November, will focus on his store of contemporary art.

Born and raised in South London, Bowie studied art, music and design before embarking on a professional career as a musician in 1963.

He was known for his alter egos – including the androgynous Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and Thin White Duke – and was the subject of a major retrospective at London's V&A in 2013.

His death followed the release of his Blackstar album, which featured a cover designed to reflect the musician's mortality by long-time graphic design collaborator Jonathan Barnbrook.

"This was a man who was facing his own mortality," said Barnbrook.

"The Blackstar symbol [★], rather than writing 'Blackstar', has as a sort of finality, a darkness, a simplicity, which is a representation of the music," said Barnbrook in an exclusive interview with Dezeen.

The Bowie/Collector auctions will be accompanied by an exhibition, taking place from 1 to 10 November 2016 at Sotheby's on New Bond Street, London.

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The exterior of this Moscow restaurant features a Memphis-inspired pattern, while the interior contains a mixture of old and new details designed to evoke the experience of dining in Israel (+ slideshow).

The restaurant serves up traditional Israeli cuisine, so Moscow-based design office Crosby Studios wanted to create an interior that would transport its customers to Florentin, a creative district in Tel Aviv.

But the two co-founders, Harry Nuriev and Dmitry Vorontsov, are also big fans of the Memphis Group – the collective led by Postmodern designer Ettore Sottsass in the 1980s – so decided to reference this on the building's exterior.

These two influences provide an unusual contrast, made even more unusual by the building's setting in the Russian capital.

The restaurant is named Dizengof 99, referencing a cult film about Israeli youth. It occupies a small stand-alone structure, which the designers have completely refurbished.

The pattern chosen to cover the building's original brick exterior comprises a black background speckled with small white rectangles, reminiscent of one of Sottsass' most famous designs.

"It was a simple choice – we love Memphis pattern," Vorontsov told Dezeen.

A side entrance leads into the building, which is divided into two spaces. The dining area is located at the front, while a bar runs across the middle, concealing the kitchen and toilets at the rear.

"The atmosphere is unusual for Moscow," added Nuriev. "The big windows allow for a lot of light, and you're immediately reminded of the warm Tel Aviv in the middle of the Moscow winter."

Before the renovation could begin, the space was stripped bare and original partitions were demolished. The walls were then partially covered with corrugated roofing panels, which are painted white.

Traces of the former partitions are still visible above, creating stripes of brick amidst the ageing plasterwork.

Veneered wooden panels were used to build the new bar, which forms a large hollow rectangle. Some tables are also covered in this material, while others are topped with white ceramic tiles.

Black plastic chairs provide seating at both the tables and the bar.

"We used the cheapest chairs, the kind you might find in a Chinatown takeaway place," said Nuriev. "We covered them in powder paint and the seats were fitted with new cloth."

A panel of translucent reinforced glass allows light but not views into the bathrooms. Other details include spherical wall lights and a wooden bench seat.

"The core of the design is a contrast of old and new, in monochrome colours," added the architect.

Dizengof 99 is located near the Taganka metro station in a courtyard of Moscow's Garden Ring – the home of a number of new restaurants.

Other recent additions to the city include a seven-storey office block by the late Zaha Hadid and the polycarbonate-clad Garage Museum of Contemporary Art by Rem Koolhaas' firm OMA.

Photography is by Gleb Leonov.

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Competition: Dezeen has teamed up with stationery brand Rubberband to give five readers the chance to win a set of six notebooks designed by Memphis artist Nathalie Du Pasquier.

Congratulations to the winners! Miguel Batista from Portugal, Jeremy Delgado from the USA and Caterina De Manuele, Andrew Curtis and Hayley Manton all from the UK.

The Mumbai-based brand is celebrating its UK launch by collaborating with French artist and designer Nathalie Du Pasquier for its current Artist Collection.

Six notebooks, available in either A5 or A6, feature different covers patterned by Du Pasquier – who was a founding member of the 1980s Memphis Group.

One has a strip of wavy lines down while another has a blue background with a black rectangle at the bottom. At the centre, a black and white rectangle, filled with a squared pattern, has two smaller rectangles coloured in yellow and green at either end.

The light yellow notebook has two shapes that look like dominoes and stripes of different orange tones.

Each book has coloured paper in either turquoise blue, parrot green, saffron orange, grey, chrome yellow or red. A coloured thread stitch detail is visible on the outside.

The forms, patterns and colours of the notebooks are typical of the Memphis style that Du Pasquier co-founded with Ettore Sottsass, Alessandro Mendini, Michael Graves and George Sowden.

At the 1981 Salone del Mobile in Milan, the group launched the movement when they designed a series of pieces created from geometric shapes in bright colours.

"It was probably the beginning of a new era," Du Pasquier told Dezeen during a 2014 interview. "Form did not have to follow function any more, and design was about communication. Even though very few of the things were actually in production, it was a big mass-media event."

The Memphis style has recently seen a resurgence in popularity, with designers reinterpreting its bold colours and forms as part of a wider renewed interest in the Postmodern movement that it is often associated with.

Du Pasquier's colourful patterns have also been applied to cushions and accessories launched as part of the partnership between British designer Sebastian Wrong and Danish company Hay.

Her graphics were used on garments by fashion brand American Apparel and for a rug produced by La Chance, which debuted in Milan last year.

Founded by designer Ajay Shah in 2007, Rubberband offers a range of stationery including paper based notebooks, journals, notepads and planners as well as furniture products.

The brand collaborates with different artists for their Artist Collection series. Previously, the brand released stationery created with graphic artist, print maker and designer Anthony Burrill.

Each winner will receive a set of six notebooks, which will be a mix of four A5 and two A6 sizes.

The A5 notebooks retail at £9.00 and the A6 notebooks cost £6.50. There is also a 50cm x 70cm poster available for £45 and all can be purchased on the Rubberband website.

This competition is now closed. Five winners will be selected at random and notified by email, and their names will be published at the top of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.

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Bright colours and geometric forms used by the 1980s Memphis Group influenced the interior design of Masquespacio's studio space in Valencia (+ slideshow).

Masquespacio aimed to create a space reflective of their Postmodern-influenced products, so designed the studio to include their signature use of bold hues and contrasting material combinations.

Marbles, birch plywood, oak plywood and lacquered MDF were all used to create surfaces and storage cupboards.

A palette of "trendy" colours used throughout the studio will be changed annually, while branded stationery can be customised for different clients.

"Our brand is composed of seven different colours that can change for each clients' presentation," co-founder Christophe Penasse told Dezeen. "In our studio we applied the most trendy colours of the moment. The idea is to change colour palette every year according to what's trendy."

"The mix of materials is a clear representation of our projects," he continued. "We like to work both on fresh projects as well as on the luxury market or elegant designs. Our passion for a wide range of materials is the best representation of this mix of materials."

"We can see the influences of Memphis' forms and the resurrection of ornaments from Postmodernism – but in a more contemporary way," he added.

Upon entering the studio, visitors are met with a waiting room that doubles up as a space for more casual meetings. Chairs, sofas and tables from Masquespacio's Toadstool collection provide seating and work desks.

A space to the right side of the office entrance is divided into two different areas: a meeting room, and the senior designer's workspaces.

Brightly-coloured partitions in hues of pink and sky blue are used to separate each desk space from the meeting room.

A larger studio room upstairs features communal desks and cupboards fronted by pegboard panels. Plants add a "touch of green" to the working environment – contrasting with the light grey-painted walls.

Masquespacio was launched in 2010 by designers Ana Milena Hernández Palacios and Christophe Penasse. Other projects by the Valencia studio include a gadget repair shop fitted out in hospital-like colours, and a law firm's office with clusters of empty picture frames on its walls.

Photography is by Bruno Almela, unless stated otherwise.

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Valencia studio Masquespacio's debut furniture collection for Spanish brand Missana features chairs and tables shaped like the rounded tops of toadstools.

Masquespacio's Toadstool collection is characterised by its colourful fabrics and rounded shapes, and includes a two-seater sofa, a table and a series of poufs.

Inspired by the colours used in works by Postmodern design group Memphis, the studio opted for a bold palette of mint and forest greens, salmon pink and deep navy.

Each piece sits upon stacked circular stands reminiscent of MPGMP's Sottsass-inspired pedestals. These platforms are available in marble, wood or golden plated metal.

The 1980s Memphis movement has recently seen a resurgence in popularity, with brands like Kartell relaunching products and designers including Camille Walala using its bold shapes, colours and patterns as references for new work.

"The collection and the material itself are what best represents our studio," Christophe Penasse told Dezeen. "We don't like to be seen as a design studio with one particular style."

"We were inspired mainly by Memphis and the actual visual culture hidden by the blend of materials and colours we used," he added.

"We feel that the colour combinations mix a strong bold colour with a vivid one," he continued. "That mix is shown clearly through the whole collection both for the fabrics as well for the leg materials."

Fans of Belgian fashion designer Raf Simons, the studio chose fabrics from his collection for Kvadrat to upholster each piece.

"The collection mixes Raf Simons' Vidar 2 fabric for Kvadrat and Tonus 3 from the same brand," said Penasse. "Ana – our art director and designer from the collection – loves fashion, and as a consequence Raf Simons' work."

Masquespacio was launched in 2010 by designers Ana Milena Hernández Palacios and Christophe Penasse. Other projects by the Valencia studio include a gadget repair shop fitted out in hospital-like colours, and a law firm's office with clusters of empty picture frames on its walls.

Photography is by Cualiti Photo Studio.

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Pomo summer: textile designer Camille Walala's collection of home accessories patterned with bold graphics influenced by the Memphis Group will launch at this month's London Design Festival.

The London-based designer, who cites Memphis as a key reference, will present her latest range at the Aria design store in Islington.

"Forget Skandi-inspired minimalism, for London Design Festival this September Aria is injecting colour into London's concrete jungle," said a statement from the store.

Furniture designs and prints by Memphis Group members became synonymous with the Postmodern movement in the 1980s, and Walala's colourful and geometric patterns continue a similar aesthetic.

Her collection includes a range of cushions, printed with a colour palette that includes black, white, red, blue and green. Dots and dashes fill coloured blocks, while diagonal stripes and square grids add to the geometric designs.

Cube-shaped pouffes carry flecked, gridded and striped patterns in various combinations on the different sides.

On wall-mounted shelves, black edges frame similar patterns applied to the back surfaces.

Available in rectangle, square and triangle versions, the storage units can be hung individually or stacked up in sets.

A range of ceramics was created in collaboration with Stoke-on-Trent pottery company CoBaltum, while the furniture was made with artist and craftsman Dale Kirk.

Walala graduated with a degree in Textile Design from the University of Brighton in 2009 before setting up her eponymous studio in east London.

She has recently covered a building in Shoreditch with her signature prints, and will apply a similar treatment to the exterior of Aria's Upper Street store during the capital's design festival. Room settings that incorporate her designs will be installed inside the shop.

"Walala will be making her mark on both the interior and exterior of our store, as our corner plot of Upper Street becomes Walala's latest canvas for London Design Festival," Aria said.

Related content: see more stories about Postmodernism

The In Da House exhibition of her products will coincide with the festival – which runs from 19 to 27 September 2015 – with the official launch taking place on 22 September.

Design store Darkroom will also present a homeware collection with Postmodern influences during this year's event.

Dezeen has been exploring the return of Postmodernism in a summer-long series of articles, which includes in-depth stories about the movement's iconic building and products, as well as new examples of the controversial style.

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Pomo summer: Montreal designers Marie-Pier Guilmain and Maud Beauchamp of MPGMB have created a trio of stacked pedestals influenced by the work of Memphis Group founder Ettore Sottsass (+ slideshow).

Designed for Brooklyn brand Souda, the wood and marble Sass stands come in three sizes of different circumferences and heights. The pedestals can be used as platers, dessert stands or plant holders, or can be used to display artwork or everyday objects.

Souda founder Shaun Kasperbauer said they will initially be made with ash, though other woods could be added later.

The pieces are inspired by Sottsass – the Postmodern design pioneer known for creating totemic furniture and homeware such as the Carlton bookcase.

Although Sottsass often used bright colours and manmade materials, MPGMB's Sass pedestals are made of natural materials in neutral tones.

"The forms and stacked volumes recall Sottsass, and the really graphic quality," Kasperbauer told Dezeen. "It's not a straight 1980s piece, though. The natural wood makes it feel more current."

"The tall one almost looks like a Devo hat," he added, referring to the re-terraced "energy dome" worn by members of the American new wave pop band Devo.

Related content: see more stories about Ettore Sottsass

MPGMB was set up in 2013 by Guilmain and Beauchamp, who have also produced a homeware range that includes terracotta cacti pots and geometric hand-held mirrors.

Souda designs and manufactures its own lighting, furniture and accessories and is beginning to work with like-minded younger designers to extend its line. "We came across their work and thought it was appropriate for our brand," Kasperbauer said.

Interest in Sottsass has continued to grow since his death in 2007 and other designers have recently used natural materials to reinterpret his work.

Gala Fernandez Montero recently created the Caro Ettore installation at Chamber in New York City, a grouping of stacked totems and an erotic board game that pays homage to the Italian designer.

This revival forms part of a wider resurgence of Postmodernism in architecture and design, which Dezeen is exploring in a summer-long series.

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Pomo summer: Memphis Group designer Martine Bedin's Super Lamp can be trailed along like a dog on a leash, demonstrating the collective's playful style. This next article in our summer series on Postmodernism tells the story behind one of Memphis' most comical products.

Bedin was a founding member of Memphis in the 1980s, and one of the younger designers that found fame through the group, which has become closely associated with Postmodernism.

Memphis pioneer Ettore Sottsass, took the French designer under his wing while she was still a student and helped turn her whimsical wheeled designs into realised products.

Produced as part of the group's first exhibition, the Super Lamp was described by the designer as "like a small dog that I could carry with me". With exposed light bulbs splayed out from its arced back like the armour of a stegosaurus and four wheels that allowed it to be dragged along, the lamp – at Bedin's admission – is among "the more funny ones" in the group's debut collection from 1981.

The bold forms and bright colours championed by the Memphis Group – and present in the Super Lamp – drew a large amount of media attention and a very mixed response from the public.

"We thought we were producing products that made people's lives better, society happier, which of course didn't happen," Sottsass told the New York Times in 2002. "But we did open up the possibilities of design."

"It was like opening a window to reveal a new landscape. Why should a table have four identical legs? Why should laminate veneer be only for the kitchen and bathroom and not for a luxurious living room?"

Bedin was born in Bordeaux in 1957 and grew up in Corsica. She studied architecture in Paris before receiving a scholarship to go to Florence in 1978, where she met the members of the Radical Architecture movement. These included the founders of Studio Alchimia, Superstudio and Archizoom Associati, who were focused on deconstructing classical architecture into new forms.

A shift in the avant-garde from the minimal aesthetic of Modernism, this proved highly influential to 20-year-old Bedin, who looked up to Radical Architecture's key figures like Alessandro Mendini and Andrea Branzi.

"That kind of vocabulary was very new to me, but in a way very close to me," she told Dezeen. "I'm a Mediterranean girl, I like colours, and probably something touched me. It was something I could work with easily."

Superstudio founder Adolfo Natalini invited her to Milan in 1979, when she was introduced to designers Michele De Lucchi and Ettore Sottsass – with whom she would go on to found the Memphis Group.

When she returned to Paris, these influences in her work angered her teachers, but she continued to travel to and from Italy on the night train to learn from the architects and designers she had met there. "That's how I began to design pieces that I could take with me," she said.

Sottsass and his wife Barbara Radice also visited Bedin in Paris, and spotted the design for the Super Lamp while flicking through her sketch book.

"He came to my house and he looked at my book," said Bedin. "He said: 'Wow, I love that lamp, we should make it'. And I ripped out the page of my book and I gave to him, and I said: 'Sign it. That's the only way for that lamp to exist because I'm not ready'. And he said: 'Wait wait wait, that's not how we do it'."

Sottsass invited her to work in his studio, so Bedin moved to Milan where she turned the design into a realised product under her own name.

She spent three years during the early 1980s at Sottsass' studio, working on her own designs while writing for a French magazine to cover her living costs.

"We were funding our economy to keep spending time all together with Ettore," said Bedin. "Every one of us had a second job to make the money and give us time for our success."

"The thing was that it was much more interesting to be with him than to work on his projects."

Born during an alcohol-fuelled meeting at Sottsass' apartment, the Memphis Group intended to "create a chaos in the co-ordination of style" and Bedin set about realising her mobile furniture and lighting designs as part of this.

"We were always discussing the possibilities of new furniture, furniture that could move," said Bedin. "I was designing everything on wheels at this time. There are so many drawings in the scrapbook with wheels: furniture, socks, many things."

The prototype for the Super Lamp – currently part of the permanent collection at London's V&A museum – has four small industrial wheels and a chassis made from pressed steel, lacquered in bright blue.

When put into production, the steel was swapped for fibreglass, which is produced in two pieces and glued along the middle.

The prominent bulbs, mounted into fittings that each carry a different colour, have gone through many iterations due to changes in regulations. After years of what Bedin described as "bad light", new technology has enabled the creation of energy-efficient bulbs that replicate the intended effect of the originals.

The Super Lamp was one of a variety of lighting designs that Bedin created for Memphis. Her later Western, Holiday and Charleston designs – all floor lamps – carry the same graphical simplicity, but never gained the same attention.

"I first spotted this lamp in a store in South Kensington when I came to London to study in the late 1980s," said designer Michael Anastassiades in a roundup of his favourite designs for Icon. "Years later, I managed to afford it. It is so different to anything I design, yet it makes me smile every time."

After several years, Memphis members began to lose their enthusiasm as they had to spend more time on finance, production and showroom liaisons than on design.

"It was like a real job and not avant-garde any more," said Bedin. "Very soon we got very bored with that."

Sottsass left Memphis in 1985. Bedin eventually moved back to France, where she still designs geometric and abstract furniture, ceramics and homeware with her own studio.

Bedin, like many other architects and designers, disassociates herself from the Postmodern label and argues that Memphis was never part of the movement, because its members did not use historical references in their work.

"It was very clear that we took the distance far from Postmodernism," she said, citing Radice's book about the group to back up her stance. "She writes that Memphis was not Postmodernism. We were taking ideas and items from a very new point of view."

Despite this, a host of Memphis pieces were included in the V&A's 2011 Postmodernism exhibition and are listed within curator Glenn Adamson's Dezeen guide to the movement.

Design critic Justin McGuirk described Memphis as "Postmodernism's boldest force" in an article for the Guardian, and Denise Scott Brown – who helped to pioneer Postmodernism in architecture with husband Robert Venturi – also considers Memphis to have close ties with their work.

"I think there is a spirit and a seriousness around [Memphis]," she told Dezeen in an exclusive interview. "I think of those people as pretty talented and pretty interesting."

The Super Lamp is still produced and sold through the Memphis Milano gallery, and has remained one of Memphis' most recognisable pieces. Bedin attributes its ongoing appeal to its relatively small size and low price. Its pet-like attributes allow a more personal connection to the product than some of the more abstract designs from the group.

"I can't say myself whether it's an icon or not," said Bedin. "Anyway, it was not designed for that purpose."

Images are courtesy of Martine Bedin, unless stated otherwise.

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Pomo summer: Ettore Sottsass' Carlton bookcase was the defining product of the 1980s Memphis Group. In the latest instalment of our Postmodernism series, we explore how its bright coloured laminates and playful form typified Memphis' challenge to Modernism's impersonal aesthetic.

More than anyone, Sottsass is credited with introducing a Postmodernist approach into design by founding Memphis in 1980.

Sottsass' Carlton bookcase – designed for the group's first collection – epitomises his use of brightly coloured laminates, graphic forms and non-functional elements that became the defining style of the decade.

With Memphis, Sottsass wanted to define a new approach to design that broke free of the restrictions of functionalism.

"When I was young, all we ever heard about was functionalism, functionalism, functionalism," Sottsass once said. "It's not enough. Design should also be sensual and exciting."

Sottsass himself felt that Postmodernism was an architectural movement, but Memphis shared many of the concerns of the Postmodernists.

The challenge to the "less is more" notion of Modernist design, a focus on appearance over function, and willy-nilly cross-referencing of historic forms and contemporary materials, meant that Memphis quickly became synonymous with Postmodernism.

"The design collective he founded in 1981 not only defined the look of that decade, it was the loudest battle cry yet rattled against Modernism – a multi-coloured, no-shapes-barred assault on the idea of functionalism and all it stood for," said critic Justin McGuirk in a profile on the designer for UK magazine Icon.

The totemic Carlton, which Sottsass created in 1981, is his most identifiable furniture design. It reads as a bookcase, a room divider and a dresser, depending on who you ask. Its form is ambiguous enough to question, at first glance, whether it's a piece of furniture at all.

The Carlton is constructed of medium density fibreboard (MDF) sections, which are laminated in different colours. It features a stack of horizontal, perpendicular and angled surfaces and has two red drawers just above the base.

The Carlton's seemingly haphazard arrangement of partitions and voids is actually based on a logical system of equilateral triangles, which support both the slanted and flat shelves.

Produced as an unlimited edition, the design became one of the most recognisable Memphis products partly due to its size – measuring 196 centimetres tall and almost as wide. It is still sold by the Memphis Milano design store for €12,230.45 (roughly £8,700).

One of the most highly regarded and versatile designers of the 20th century, Sottsass was "a fun loving, libidinous and charismatic guru," according to Glenn Adamson, co-curator the 2011-12 Postmodernism exhibition at London's V&A museum, which included many Memphis pieces.

Sottsass was born in Innsbruck, Austria in 1917. Following in his father's footsteps, he studied architecture in Turin, Italy, and opened his first studio in Milan in 1947, after a spell as a prisoner of war in a Sarajevo concentration camp during the second world war.

In the 1950s and 1960s, he designed office equipment, typewriters and furniture for Italian company Olivetti, including the iconic "pop" Valentine typewriter.

He later became a leading figure in the Radical Design movement, co-founding Studio Alchimia with Alessandro Mendini in 1976.

Memphis was born during a meeting at Sottsass' apartment on Via San Galdino in Milan in 1980, when the designer was already in his sixties. Those present included young designers Michele de Lucchi, George Sowden, Martine Bedin, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Marco Zanini and Matteo Thun.

"At an age when most people were thinking of retiring, Sottsass started stuff with another generation and produced an explosion," Deyan Sudjic, director of London's Design Museum, told Dezeen.

The group's name is allegedly taken from the 1966 Bob Dylan track "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" that was played throughout their meeting.

"We can remember the first hours of the meeting but not the last ones because we were all drunk," Martine Bedin told Dezeen, who said that the group were united in their desire to break accepted notions of good taste.

"The idea of course was that we wanted to get out of the bourgeois way of making furniture," said Bedin. "The bourgeois house was the idea that every kind of furniture was looking the same. So you had the bed the same style, the clothes, everything the same. So the first step was to create a chaos in the co-ordination of style."

However Bedin said the group did not consider themselves Postmodernists, but rather were descendants of the Radical Design movement.

"Radical Design from the 70s in Florence was a complete destruction of classical architecture," she said. "It was very clear that we distanced ourselves far from Postmodernism. We were taking ideas and items from a very new point of view. it was like putting a big cross through academic and classic culture."

Under Sottsass' direction, the designers came up with a range of products that featured whimsical shapes, and were made using colourful laminated wood and metal provided by Italian company Abet Laminati – combining the design experiment with a marketing exercise.

Bold geometric forms were paired with the bright hues and clashing patterns to create designs that were unlike anything that had been seen before. The style has been described by writer Bertrand Pellegrin as "a shotgun wedding between Bauhaus and Fisher-Price".

The group debuted its collection at Milan's Arc '74 showroom on 18 September 1981, causing a mass-media event that sent waves through the city's design community.

Sottsass himself nearly missed the launch party, according to Glenn Adamson.

"So sensational was the opening of Memphis that Sottsass almost did not attend, thinking (on his way there in the back of a cab, stalled in the crowds) that a terrorist bomb may have gone off in downtown Milan," Adamson wrote in Dezeen guide to Postmodern architecture and design.

Italian author and journalist Barbara Radice – another Memphis Group member and Sottsass' second wife – played a part in documenting and promoting the designs to international audiences through magazines like Domus and a dedicated monograph for the group.

Carlton was just one of a range of designs Sottsass presented at the first Memphis show. Another recognisable piece is the Tahiti table lamp which, at just 60 centimetres tall, is much smaller in scale, but uses similarly bright colours and angled elements.

The shape of the plastic and aluminium light is reminiscent of a tropical bird, with a long yellow neck, a round pink head and a square red beak. It also features a triangular black foot – similar to the supports for the angled sections of the Carlton.

The bulb is located inside the "beak", which can be adjusted up and down by rotating the "head", and the electric cable runs down its back and out of the stand.

Like the bookcase, it has a base covered with a confetti-like pattern called Bacterio that Sottsass designed in 1978.

Other notable Sottsass products from the first Memphis collection include the Ashoka lamp, the Casablanca cabinet and the Beverly sideboard.

After the group's initial success, Sottsass quickly snapped up other international architects and designers including Peter Shire and Arata Isozaki to create products for its collections. Notable Postmodern architects Michael Graves, Aldo Rossi and Hans Hollein also contributed to the Memphis product ranges released during the 1980s.

"Ettore was very conscious of what he was doing," said American designer Peter Shire, who joined Memphis at Sottsass' invitation. "He was going around the world to create a community."

The Memphis Group finally disbanded in 1988, after Sottsass abandoned ship in 1985 to concentrate on his architecture studio Sottsass Associati, but a resurgence in interest for the movement's philosophy and resulting aesthetic has crept back into furniture and homeware design in recent years.

At Milan design week last year, an exhibition presented original Memphis pieces, while a series of new products in a similar style could be spotted across the city.

Sottsass himself has also come back in vogue, following exhibitions of his work both just before and after he died aged 90 in 2007.

London design store Darkroom presented an exhibition titled So Sottsass in 2013, featuring a series of limited-edition vases and other products based on his work.

Earlier this year, Italian plastic brand Kartell launched a furniture range of original Sottsass designs for the first time – created using technology that wasn't available at the time they were conceived in 2004.

With this new wave of interest in Postmodernism and the Memphis Group, pieces like Carlton and Tahiti remain emblems of Sottsass' radical decision to change conceptions of design and bring a "why not?" attitude to the industry.

Product photography is by Pariano Angelantonio, courtesy of Memphis Milano.

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Milan 2015: nine furniture and homeware items by Italian designer and protagonist of the Memphis movement Ettore Sottsass have been put into production for the first time by Kartell (+ slideshow).

The Ettore Sottsass collection for Italian brand Kartell comprises six vases, two stools and a lamp. The brightly coloured and sculptural pieces were designed by Sottsass for the company just three years before his death in 2007, but never mass produced because the technology needed wasn't available at the time.

"Technology enables us to realise Sottsass' designs with a quality and sophistication that would have been impossible ten years ago," said Kartell president Claudio Luti. "I am convinced that the maestro would have been enthusiastic as to how we have given life to his objects, that are one of a kind, unmistakeable, some of which will be projected towards a totally industrial and international future."

Originally trained as an architect, Sotsass first found success as a designer for Italian office equipment company Olivetti in the 1950s, but is best known for his role in founding the Postmodernist Memphis Group of designers in the 1980s. The group's influential work was typified by bright colours and graphic patterns, producing furniture with bold, often asymmetric, silhouettes.

The distinctive style of the Memphis designers has recently been enjoying a revival of interest, which was strongly evident at last year's Milan design week and continued this year.

One of its key members, artist Nathalie du Pasquier, has also recently contributed patterns to collections by Danish furniture company Hay as well as a fashion range by American Apparel, among others.

To celebrate the launch of the Ettore Sottsass collection, Kartell has paid homage to the designer with a Memphis-themed exhibition at its flagship store in Milan. In honour of the occasion, chairs in the brand's collection by designers including Philippe Starck and Patricia Urquiola have been upholstered with fabric designed by Sottsass' contemporaries.

The brightly coloured and patterned materials in shades ranging from acid green to hot pink were designed by core members of the Memphis Group: Michele de Lucchi, Nathalie du Pasquier, and George Sowden, as well as Sottsass.

"In this sense the tribute to their creator will be even more long lasting, achieving the return to the factory Ettore Sottsass wished for," said Luti.

The six stools and two vases in the Ettore Sottsass collection are totem-like in structure, made from conjoined bulging or angular forms that give the pieces curving or ribbed profiles.

The final design is a lamp named Daisy, which features pieces of coloured plastic suspended from a black ring.

The rectangular pieces of translucent plastic in tones of red, pink, blue and yellow hang from small holes around the edge of the black plastic hoop.

Items from the collection are presented at the Kartell flagship store in Milan, where all ten windows in the curving shopfront have been framed with colourful and printed decals that echo the Memphis designs within.

"Today Ettore Sottsass lives again with his extraordinary creativity thanks to some original projects designed for Kartell in 2004 hitherto unproduced," said a statement from Kartell. "Thus Kartell has once again brought Sottsass and Memphis together in a triumph of signs and colour."

Glossy red, purple and black stools and vases by Sotsass are presented on tiered plinths patterned with horizontal and diagonal stripes in the windows, while soft furnishings updated with Memphis fabrics are positioned against an arrangement of colourful columns dotted around the shop floor.

"I find this cooperation with Kartell highly interesting. Kartell will allow us to enter, to make ourselves known and appreciated in millions of homes where otherwise we could never have been," said Alberto Bianchi Albrici, who is sole administrator of Memphis srl – the official company that produces designs under the Memphis brand. "This is a good thing for all," he added.

The exhibition continues at the Kartell flagship store on Via Turati until 19 April.

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New York 2014: American magazine Sight Unseen asked designers to add bold prints to fashion and furniture designs using digital customisation company Print All Over Me.

The collaboration between Sight Unseen and Print All Over Me for the magazine's New York exhibition earlier this month resulted in a collection of prints that harked back to early 1990s fashion.

"The big comment we got was 'oh, this reminds me of [TV show] Saved By the Bell'," said Jesse Finkelstein, who founded Print All Over Me with his sister Meredith.

Print All Over Me's digital printing service allows anyone to upload any graphic they chose, and have it printed onto white garments and accessories.

For this project, designers created patterns for garments and furniture pieces that were printed onto fabric and upholstery using the service.

The bold colours and strong graphics used for the prints and the styling of the photoshoot are reminiscent of those used by members of 1980s and 1990s Italian design movement Memphis.

"Memphis was definitely a unifying theme amongst the prints, and I think this speaks generally to a nostalgia," Finkelstein told Dezeen. "We're obviously seeing a 1990s moment in fashion, but its references are a bit more tech and future inspired. The group of prints shown at Sight Unseen represent a similar touchstone but far less ominous."

The same influence could be seen in a number of projects across the Sight Unseen Offsite exhibition and the style was back in favour at Milan design week last month.

"Memphis is clearly back and I feel that while the furniture and industrial design community has been ready to embrace, fashion has lagged, which is interesting because I often feel that fashion tends to be the trend driver," Finkelstein commented.

"Promoting this aesthetic wasn't our intention, however, by virtue of working with a lot of designers that create textiles and materials for home, I think we were tapping into that current."

Designers Camille Walala, Louie Rigano and Saskia Pomeroy were asked to apply all-over prints to bomber jackets, dresses, T-shirts, backpacks and other clothing. Brooklyn studio Snarkitecture also created a range of prints for garments.

Seattle designer Erich Ginder modified his faceted Dot/Dash lamp to display a digital illustration by Santtu Mustonen and Will Bryant created a series of beanbag chairs.

Graphic designer Damien Correll created a squiggly blue pattern printed onto the leather sling seat of a new wooden chair by Brooklyn brand Fort Standard, while fashion designer Ellen Van Dusen lent one of her colourful geometric prints to four new outdoor seats by Eric Trine.

Finkelstein believes that the resurgence of bolder prints is driving simpler shapes in clothes themselves – something he dubs the "Instagram effect" – which will eventually influence furniture design.

"The Instagram effect is very real," said Finkelstein. "There's clearly a flattening of design, where prints are becoming responsible for dimension and scale. So in fashion shapes are becoming simpler, and the prints are driving much of the visual interest and I would imagine that this will also have an affect on home and furniture design as well."

The collection was shown at the Sight Unseen Offsite exhibition during New York design week – see our pick of the designers and studios from the event.

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Feature: thirty-three years after designs by the Memphis Group caused a "mass-media event" at the Salone del Mobile, the bold graphic style they created is back in favour in Milan and is appearing in some unusual places, finds Dan Howarth.

Clashing colours, blocky shapes and loud patterns could be spotted in galleries, shops and on stands around Milan this week, signalling a return of the Memphis style often associated with these elements.

The Memphis movement began in 1980 after Postmodernist designer Ettore Sottsass gathered together a group of like-minded designers working in Milan. The group allegedly took its name from the 1966 Bob Dylan track "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" that was played throughout their meeting.

The designers, including Sottsass, Alessandro Mendini, Michael Graves, George Sowden and Nathalie Du Pasquier, debuted a range of pieces designed to communicate ideas rather than being based on forms at the 1981 Salone del Mobile in Milan.

"It was probably the beginning of a new era," Du Pasquier told Dezeen. "Form did not have to follow function any more, and design was about communication. Even though very few of the things were actually in production, it was a big mass-media event."

These products included Sottsass' unconventional Carlton bookcase, which featured colourful angled shelves and bookends, disconnected from one another. It aimed to question why a bookcase needed to look like a typical bookcase.

This notion fell under the Postmodern cultural style - a reaction to the functional aesthetic of the Modernism movement prevalent in the years before - and resulted in a series of pieces created from geometric shapes in bright colours.

Over three decades later, the forms, patterns and colours typical of Memphis have returned to Milan's design week and can be seen in exhibitions across the city.

The rise of the trend has come after a number of exhibitions and articles about Postmodernism and design in the 1980s, following Sottsass' death in 2007.

These included Postmodernism: Style and Subversion at London's V&A museum in 2011-12 and Li Edelkoort's Totemism show, which drew comparisons between Memphis and contemporary design in South Africa at Design Indaba last year.

After leaving the design world to work as an artist, Natalie du Pasquier has recently been thrown into the spotlight by lending her bold signature prints to products by well-known brands.

Her colourful patterns have been applied to cushions and accessories launched last year as part of the Wrong for Hay partnership between British designer Sebastian Wrong and Danish company Hay.

The Du Pasquier-patterned products are currently on display at the brand's pop-up Mini Mart for Milan design week and press material is being given away in the tote bags, which have been spotted slung over many shoulders around the city.

According to a spokesperson for Hay, the range has been so successful that the brand has commissioned Du Pasquier to extend the collection with new designs.

Her graphics are also used on garments by fashion brand American Apparel and for a rug produced by La Chance, which debuted in Milan last year.

"Memphis as a movement and philosophy has been in the public eye for a few years now," said Johanna Agerman Ross, editor-in-chief of Disegno magazine, who approached Du Pasquier about a collaboration after seeing her prints resurface and curated an exhibition of her new work for Milan design week this year.

"Nathalie has had some prominence, for example with her textiles for Wrong for Hay," said Agerman Ross. "There had also been some other balls in the air such as American Apparel, so it seemed like the perfect time to approach her."

An exhibition of original Memphis furniture is currently on show at Milan's Fondazione Stelline, providing visitors with a handy comparative tool to spot elements from the designs in new work and inspiration for more young designers visiting the city.

"Memphis has been the last big movement so people remember very well," said Alberto Bianchi Albrici, the exhibition's curator and head of Post Design - the company that continues to produce the pieces.

"Sure it's more popular today more than ten years ago," he said. "Firstly because we have internet. Also because we are sought after by several people from stores who see the exhibition at the museum. I think that is normal."

With so many references around, designers are adapting the style and introducing new colours, geometries or patterns to create contemporary iterations.

"I think a lot of younger designers that belong to a generation that didn't live through it come to it as a point of inspiration," said Agerman Ross.

Members of the Terrazzo Project have made the Terrazzo composite material in bright colours and used it to build geometric sculptures on show alongside the ECAL exhibition in Milan's Brera district.

The colours and styling used for the installation are very similar to work by Sottsass. "What we wanted to do this year was colourful and it's true, [the installation] is similar to Memphis in many ways." said Philippe-Albert Lefebvre of the Terrazzo Project. "It's something that's in the air," his colleague Ana Varela added.

However, Memphis was not originally just about decoration, colour and graphics.

"Memphis is being used as a style and as a styling tool by a lot of designers and companies, whereas it was actually more of a philosophy and way of working," explained Agerman Ross.

Albrici agrees that the term "Memphis" shouldn't just be thrown around to describe the patterns and clashing colours added to designs.

"If you come to me and say 'I am influenced heavily by Memphis', my feeling is that you need to do something new," said Albrici. "You can be influenced by Memphis but you must be careful, because to make strange drawings is easy but it's not only strange, there was a more complicated structure."

"Memphis wasn't about decoration," said Du Pasquier's partner and fellow Memphis Group member George Sowden. "There wasn't even a Memphis style, despite what everyone says."

He believes that the Postmodern philosophy may still be present today, but that is has changed. "Maybe younger Postmodern designers are using it themselves also as communication, but I don't think they're doing it in the same way we were doing it during Memphis time."

Nevertheless, Du Pasquier said she is happy to continue her recent foray back into design. "I have started from where I stopped and I now have put the machine in motion again," she said. "I'm going to design other things, textiles. If I have requests I am more than happy to do it."

But she wonders how long the demand for her signature style will last.

"Maybe people will only be interested in stripes next year and won't call me any more."

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High street fashion chain American Apparel has launched a 43-piece collection of clothing featuring graphic prints by Memphis Group designer Nathalie Du Pasquier (+ movie).

The Nathalie Du Pasquier for American Apparel collection includes womenswear, menswear and accessories in minimalistic shapes covered in colourful, graphic prints.

Du Pasquier was a core member of the Milan-based Memphis Group that pioneered post-modern furniture and fabric design in the 1980s, but has since nurtured a career as an artist.

She was approached by American Apparel creative director Iris Alonzo who asked her to create prints similar to those she designed during the Memphis era.

"It was the first collaboration with a fashion company in many, many years actually because I am a painter," Du Pasquier told the New York Times. "I have not done that kind of work in a long time."

The collection marks a departure from American Apparel's signature style of single-colour staples, with its womenswear often produced in skin tight stretch jersey.

Prints by Du Pasquier also feature in the Wrong for Hay collection launched last year, which is expanding due to popularity.

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