The exhibition is introduced with a square window display inspired by a photo studio, accommodating a mise-en-scene of the First chair, a chair designed by Michele De Lucchi in 1982/83, creating a visual frame around this protagonist object of the exhibition. Acting as a sleek, brushed aluminium backdrop for the First Chair in the front window, the partition wall at the entrance exposes its raw backside to the visitors as they enter the space. The raw OSB backside of the wall is plastered with pages of a book on the Memphis collective: Memphis: Research, Experiences, Results, Failures and Successes of New Design, first published in 1984, back then until today received as a manifesto of the collective’s agenda and written by Barbara Radice, a renowned Italian design critic. 

The OSB-aluminium sandwich construction with open edges is like 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 VDM’s collection are scattered along the podium and backed up by wallpapers and floor graphics using Memphis patterns designed by the Memphis member George Sowden in the 1980s.

Scanned drawings of Ettore Sottsass were animated with a real time drawing effect, as if visitors would witness Sottsass drawing them live as they watched.