THE MEMPHIS ROOM AT SALONE DEL MOBILE MILANO | 8-13 APRIL 2025 | FIERA MILANO, RHO
The Memphis Room is the display project by Memphis at Salone del Mobile 2025 in Milan, guided by two key concepts: archive and renewal.
With Memphis the concept of renewal is turned upside-down: it is not a way of updating something obsolete, although the spirit of the pieces transcends eras and always keeps its contemporary character intact. Here, the renewal is expressed through the reinterpretation of already extraordinary creations, belonging to the legendary collection Memphis 1981–1986, in a genuine return to the new.
Likewise, for Memphis the archive cannot be reduced to a static repository of memories: the room that contains the Memphis furnishings is a living resource in continuing transformation, capable of generating new narratives. This is not a simple nostalgic reworking of the past, but a constant reassertion of the originality of the creations of Sottsass and the group. In other words, Memphis continues to be synonymous with innovation.
Apart from the intrinsic contemporary character, another distinctive aspect of the pieces on view in the Memphis Room is the capacity to generate novel connections while offering new keys of interpretation, in relation to the classics already in the catalogue, as well as the new additions.
Among the “new” pieces that enhance this dynamic space, we find the Venezia table and the black Hyatt table, both originally envisioned by Ettore Sottsass, in different moments, for his own house in Milan. Beside them stand the reissues of the mysterious Sheraton sculptural mirror designed by Luigi Serafini in 1981; the ironically aseptic Century daybed created by Andrea Branzi in 1982; and the playful but chic Dorian and Ionian table mirrors by Michele De Lucchi from 1985.
In its “return to the new” Memphis exhibits unusual juxtapositions and continues to investigate the legacy of its creators, without remaining in reverential awe of history, but preserving the enthusiasm of a collection that continues to be a synonym of the avant-garde, even today.
