1931-2019

One of the main representatives of Italian design, Alessandro Mendini passed away on 18 February 2019, at the age of 87. Born in Milan, Mendini graduated from the city’s Politecnico, and soon he joined cutting edge groups that, in the 1960s, tried to go beyond the modern legacy, using eclectic languages in which broken forms and intense colors prevailed. This avant-gardist drive took him to join the Radical Design group and Studio Alchimia as partner, where he worked with other prominent architects like Ettore Sottsass and Michele de Lucchi. Later he went on to establish Atelier Mendini with his brother Francesco, dealing with all sorts of commissions like object designs for daily use, to which we gave a naif touch – anthropomorphic corkscrewers – and furniture – colorist pieces verging on kitsch –, to hard-to-classify buildings, characterized also by the strong pressence of color, like the Forum Museum in Omegna or the Groningen Museum in the Netherlands. Mendini was also a refined journalist, and directed the magazines Casabella, Modo (which he founded) and, above all, Domus.