Alessandro Mendini

Alessandro Mendini was born in Milan in 1931 and here he graduated in architecture at the local Polytechnic. Initially associated with the Nizzoli studio (1960-1970), he is one of the best known and most appreciated contemporary designers, a protagonist since the seventies of the renewal of made in Italy production thanks to his adhesion to numerous avant-gardes of Radical Design (among others Alchemy, first place in the experiments on the theme of decoration, which earned him a Compasso d'Oro in 1981) and a tireless participation in the theoretical debate. In fact, he directed the magazines "Casabella" (from 1970 to 1976), "Modo" (which he founded in 1977 and led until 1981) and "Domus" (1979-1985; 2010-2011), whose direction he was initially called by Gio Ponti himself, about to leave due to age limits. Among his most famous writings, we remember "Domestic landscape" (1979), "Architettura addio" (1981), "Progetto unelice" (1983), "Existenz maximum" (1990): all occasions, during which he developed fundamental concepts such as "neo-modern design" (equated with sixteenth-century Mannerism, which was able to corrode the classic rules of the project from the inside), "banal house" (which recognizes the value of ugliness and kitsch in everyday life ) and redesign.