426 After the International Style: The Late Twentieth Century
is distinguished by a defining grid motif that
unifies marble floors, ceiling skylights, and
openings on the levels surrounding the central
atrium. On a much smaller scale, his designs for
a teakettle, scarves, and kitchen tools brought
his work to a large public of fashion-oriented
shoppers. Graves has also designed a number
of major projects in other countries.
Other Post-modernist Work in the US
Philip Johnson, once a modernist in the manner
of Mies van der Rohe, appeared to have joined
the post-modernists when he topped his New
York skyscraper headquarters office building
for A.T.&T. (1978–83) with a whimsical motif
suggesting pediments of Chippendale book-
cases. The entrance is through a vast archform
portal leading into a marble lobby with details
that suggest a medieval monastery (21.15). In
the center he placed the gilded statue that once
topped the old A.T.&T. building in downtown
New York. The majestic claims of a giant cor-
poration appear to be interpreted ironically
in whimsical and decorative terms. The office
building lobby on Third Avenue in New York
suggests both post-modernism and 1930s
Art Deco.
There were several other examples of post-
modernism in the United States; the most
noteworthy are the whimsical Piazza d’Italia
public plaza in downtown New Orleans (1978)
by Charles Moore (1925– 93) and Mario Botta’s
(b. 1943) design for the San Francisco Museum
of Modern Art (1995).
Post-modernism in Europe
In Europe the claims of modernism encoun-
tered a major challenge in the work of the
Milan-based collaborative that took the name
Memphis in 1981. Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007),
the leader of the group, along with associates
Andrea Branzi, Michele de Lucchi, Alessandro
Mendini (21.16), Matteo Thun, Marco Zanuso,
and others, broke away from mainline mod-
ernism by designing furniture, textiles, and
decorative objects of deliberate eccentric-
ity and playfulness. Bright color, decorative
surface pattern, and shapes that have little
reference to function are characteristics of
Memphis design. Designers from other coun-
tries joined as well, including Shiro Kuramata,
Arata Isozaki, Hans Hollein, and Michael
c21.indd 426
21.15 Philip Johnson, A.T.&
T. (now Sony Plaza) Building,
New York, 1978–83.
The ground-floor entrance
lobby of this building, a modern
skyscraper, introduces such
surprises as arched and
vaulted spaces, with columns
reminiscent of a Romanesque
cloister in front of paneled
elevator doors, a geometrically
patterned marble floor, and,
on a central pedestal (to the
right of the photograph), a
gilded statue of a winged male
figure. The shadow of the
statue flickers on the wall in this
view. Johnson’s design is not
altogether surprising when it is
remembered that he had long
since abandoned Mies van der
Rohe’s precepts.
Graves. Graves provided a dressing-table
design for Memphis in 1981. Its stepped forms,
strong color, and pinnacle top relate clearly to
such designs as Sottsass’s Casablanca sideboard
and iconic Carlton bookcase (21.17; 1981) with
their bright colors and angular shapes. Having
properly disconcerted the furniture design
establishment, Memphis disbanded in 1988.
Its members produced some of the most origi-
nal works of the late twentieth century, both as
part of the collaborative and independently.
Sottsass’s firm, Sottsass Associati, created a
new gallery for the Museum of Contemporary
Furniture in Ravenna (1994). The result-
ing spaces, enclosed gallery, portico, and
open courtyard use simple rectangular and
arch-shaped openings that generate spatial com-
plexity accented by bright color (21.18). The
fantasy of Memphis can be traced here in the
perspective illusions of wall painting, while a
tranquil serenity dominates the spaces intended
for “open studio” gatherings of artists.
Hans Hollein (b. 1934) was the designer of
a remarkable post-modernist interior in 1978,
the Austrian Travel Bureau office in Vienna.
Its toylike elements are intended to symbolize
travel to various regions—a column fragment
to suggest Greece and Rome, a garden kiosk
pavilion, and, most obvious, metal palm trees
to suggest tropical and desert destinations. A
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