Nathalie Opris’ design welcomes visitors into the gallery space via a large window display made to look like a photo studio: this frames Michele De Lucchi’s First chair, turning it into the exhibition’s first protagonist.  Once visitors enter, the sleek, brushed aluminum backdrop of the window display is exposed from the opposite side as raw material plastered with pages of Memphis founding member Barbara Radice’s 1984 manifesto-like publication Memphis: Research, Experiences, Results, Failures and Successes of New Design. This material “sandwich” construction is reminiscent of a section cut from a piece of laminated chipboard Memphis furniture – shiny on the surface, raw on the inside.

The exhibition space expands from this window setup to form a narrow, rectangular space with a catwalk-inspired podium as a centerpiece. The collective’s extroverted furniture pieces from the museum’s collection are scattered along the podium and juxtaposed against wallpapers and floor graphics by the Memphis member George Sowden. Nathalie scanned drawings by Ettore Sottsass and animated them with a real-time drawing effect, so visitors could witness their creation in “real time”.