Memphis
Ruined city beside the Nile, 19 km/12 mi southwest of Cairo, Egypt. Once the centre of the worship of Ptah, it was the earliest capital of a united Egypt under King Menes in about 3050 BC, and acted intermittently as capital until around 1300 BC.
Memphis was later used as a stone quarry, but the ‘cemetery city’ of Sakkara survives, with the step pyramid built for King Zoser by Imhotep, probably the world's oldest stone building.
Memphis
Industrial city and port on the Mississippi River, in southwestern Tennessee, USA, linked by a bridge with West Memphis, Arkansas, across the river; seat of Shelby County; population (2000 est) 650,100. It is a major cotton market, and one of the leading centres in the USA for the production of hardwood lumber; other industries include food processing, brewing, and the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, chemicals, medical supplies, furniture, and tobacco products. A 1980s industry of handmade ultramodern furniture is called Memphis style and copied by Italian and French firms.
History
The French built a fort here in 1739, but Memphis was not founded until 1819. It was incorporated as a town in 1826, and as a city in 1849. During the American Civil War Memphis was an important Confederate military centre and it served as the temporary state capital until 1862, when it was captured by Union forces after a river battle. US civil-rights campaigner Martin Luther
King, Jr, was assassinated here on 4 April 1968, and the National Civil Rights Museum (1991) stands on the site where the assassination took place.
Musical history The musical history of Memphis includes Beale Street, home of the blues composer W C Handy, and Graceland, home of Elvis Presley; its recording studios and record companies (Sun 1953–68, Stax 1960–75) made it a focus of the music industry. During the decade 1960–70, the population of Memphis rose by 25 %. |
Educational institutions The city is the seat of several colleges including Rhodes College (1848), Le Moyne-Owen College (1862), Christian Brothers University (1871), the University of Tennessee-Memphis (1911), Memphis State University (1912), Southern College of Optometry (1932), and Memphis College of Art (1936). |
Memphis
| Informal group of Italian designers established in 1981, headed by Ettore Sottsass and including Michele de Lucchi (1951– ), George Sowden, and Nathalie du Pasquier, based in Milan. It put together a series of annual exhibitions 1981–87 challenging the conventional language of ‘good design’. |
| With the help of a number of like-minded designers in other international centres, it set out to demonstrate that not only the post-war Italian design movement but also modern design everywhere was in crisis. The radical proposals of the designers were expressed in vibrant colours and unusual forms. |
| They set up a ‘shock wave’ through the international design community. |
