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Graziella Leyla Ciag

MINIMUMDESIGN

24 ORE Cultura

AlessandroMENDINI

Series directed byAndrea Branzi


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MINIMUMDESIGN

Titles in the series Franco AlbiniAchille and Pier GiacomoCastiglioniJoe ColomboTom DixonGio PontiEttore Sottsass

Ron AradJasper MorrisonPhilippe Starck

Forthcoming titles Alvar AaltoGae AulentiMario BelliniAndrea BranziAntonio CitterioMichele De LucchiStefano GiovannoniKonstantin GrcicVico MagistrettiAngelo MangiarottiEnzo MariCarlo MollinoEero SaarinenMarco Zanuso

CoverProust armchair, 1978 Atelier Mendini, Milan

Published by24 ORE Cultura srl

Editorial Director Natalina Costa

Head of planning Balthazar Pagani

Project Editor Chiara Savino

Picture ResearchAlessandra Murolo

Head of Technical and Graphic Maurizio BartomioliGraphic designIrma Robbiatipage layout Gianluca Turturo Photolithography Valter Montani

Editorial Assistant Giorgia Montagna

With the contribution ofConsultant Fund RaisingCoordinationChiara GiudiceConsultant Fund Raising Anna MainoliPicture Research and Editing

Silvia RussoEditing Arianna BassiEnglish translation Sylvia Adrian Notini

2011 24 ORE Cultura srl, Pero (Milan), ItalyAll rights reserved. No part of this bookmay be reproduced in any form.First edition: November 2011ISBN 978-88-6648-028-0

Printed in Italy

Special thanks toBeatrice Felis of Atelier Mendini, Milan


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Alessandro Mendini must be understood as themost direct heir to an original Italian syndrome whosehistorical origins lie in the contradictions and themalaise of early modernity; the heir, therefore, of astrategic line that is wholly original in respect toEuropean Rationalism.Italys delay in the early phases of the IndustrialRevolution has weighed greatly on our culture ofthe project, and especially on the engendering inthis country of an idea of modernity that is muchmore theoretical than practical. At the start of thetwentieth century, the process of renewal that nodoubt was struggling to take off was acceleratedby the artists, who prophesized much before it

actually took place as Italian society was still largelyunder the inuence of the era of King Umberto I ananthropological mutation that would be inducedby the industries and by speed.Yet the Italian avant-gardes were aware of a sort ofvoid that existed behind their backs, and in someways continued to nurture an unspoken doubt asto the capacity of industrialization to achieve realprogress. The Futurists believed that modernity wouldnot produce as to some extent did occur a newcivilization and new values, but only a sort ofCittche sale (The City Rises), the title Umberto Boccionigave one of his paintings, hence, endless and withoutan end. With Metaphysics, modernity felt stuckbetween a probable failure of the future and thecertain failure of the past, as it statically contemplateda meaningless present.At the same time, the Negative Thinking of the greatintellectuals of the nis Austriae already foreshadoweda very complex future; Robert Musil, for instance,spoke of the advent of a Man without Qualities,Oscar Spengler theorized theDecline of the West ,

Alessandro MendiniAndrea Branzi

and Ludwig Hilberseimer por trayed the grey,anonymous and inhospitable scenarios of theindustrial city.

The rst Italian design to be produced in the interwarperiod, which was not preceded by an adequatereformist debate and in the absence of an

enlightened society, developed a unique idea(the only one in Europe) of a modernity of

the surface , a decorative, scenographic sort of modernity that, while not


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Mendini enacted a mutation in their identity: frombanal objects to the protagonists of social rites andnew markets. The Proust armchair, thanks to itsnineteenth-century upholstery featuring a uniquedecor, has become the assertion of a possiblealternative to structural modernity, faced with thediffusive efcacy of itsmedia icon .Contemporary design nds itself face-to face-withtwo different territorial options: the rst of these isrepresented by the real market, where projects exist,to become goods that are bought and used, whilethe second of these is represented by the mediaterritory, where the objects may even not existphysically, as their virtual image alone inuencestaste, the visual culture and therefore the world of

ideas. Mendini moves about in a territory that issomewhere in between, where objects are in partreal and in part virtual; his great experience in thesector of design publishing (twice director of Domus,Casabella and MODO ) is not collateral to his workas a designer; rather, it is an integral part of it,because it represents the media side, where images,information and criticism can actually transformsocial culture itself.Italy, which has always had a problematic idea ofmodernity (as we have seen), thinking of it as more

of a hypothetical reality than a real one, is the countrywhere design and architecture periodicals havehad a unique circulation and role in the world:Domus, Casabella, Interni, Abitare and many otherslike them have never just been the titles of a tradesector on whose pages only professional issues aredebated; rather, they have played a much broadersocial role. They have allowed ideas and knowledgeto circulate, they have modied not only taste butalso, indirectly, the customs of a country. It is nocoincidence if a country like Italy, where modernityhas never been fully implemented and where thestructural reforms that should be a part of it havenever occurred, has for a long time been consideredthe home of a new modernity. Milan is recognizedas being the world capital of design and of theMade in Italy brand, a reality that is in part basedon products and in part based on media ...

dealing with a structural reform of the domesticworld, brought about a change in what we mightcall its skin, just as Giacomo Balla and FortunatoDepero did in their work by introducing environmentalsigns and narratives for a Pirandellian comedy thatwent under the name of modernity. Theirs was not,like that of Vienna, a tragic vision, but rather a preciseinterpretation of a better future freed from serioushumanistic responsibilities and the weight of history,but in any case fragile in its underlying values. It wasprecisely from this type of strategy that AlessandroMendinis projects were born, that is, from a modernityof the surfaces . A non-enlightened modernity butnot even a conservative one, intimist but not indifferent,which changed the meaning of reality without

touching its deep structures. Mendinis work as aconsultant for Alessi and Swatch quite clearlyhighlighted this idea of objects that, throughcolour, decoration and new languages,took on a different role and becamea gift, collectors objects. Withoutaltering their function,

Interno di un interno ,

a collection of furnitureand objects, drawing, 1991


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Personally speaking, its notthe project that interests me:I use project-related reality

not in coherence with its aim,but so that I can carry out

my natural vital act, which is to produce images.

Auto-presentazione , 1987


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Proust armchair, miniaturein gilt copper, Short Stories, 2004

Monumentino da Casa, miniaturein gilt brass, Short Stories, 2004

pp. 10-11Kandissi sofa, miniaturein gilt brass, Short Stories, 2004

p. 7Alessandro Mendiniand Mobili per Uomo, Bisazza


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Anna toile, corkscrew, jewelryversion, limited edition, project

with Young Hee Cha, Alessi, 2010


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Furniture to be worn, performance for FiorucciMilano, project with Alchimia, 1982

Costume for Donna and Arpa, project with Lidia Prandi,Ines Flok and Davide Mosconi, performance, 1976


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Cosmesi Universale,drawings, 1987

Citt Gentile, Corian sculptures,project with Bruno Gregori,drawings, 2004


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Atelier Mendini Milan, Alessandroand Francesco Mendinis studio,opened in 1989


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Euclide, MamoliRubinetterie, 2006Aurora, Olivari, 1994


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The poeticsof Alessandro

Mendini


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In 1970, in a Milan still shaken by the protestsof 1968, Alessandro Mendini left behind him theprofessional activity he had experienced at StudioNizzoli and took over the running of the periodicalCasabella , which he would soon turn into the veryheart of the documentation, development anddissemination of the neo-avant-garde of ItalianDesign. The most signicant juncture in this processwas, in 1972, the periodicals participation in theprestigious exhibition organized at the MoMA in

New York called Italy: The New Domestic Land- scape , which staged, with the skilful directing ofEmilio Ambasz, the proposals and the provocationsof all the groups belonging to this trend, or theirfriendly travel companions (Archizoom, Superstu-dio, UFO, Strum, Ettore Sottsass, Gaetano Pesce,etc.), brought together by the idea of wanting toput aside the stereotypical image of Italy as theBel Paese of Good Design.On the cover of issue no. 367 ofCasabella dedi-cated to that American exhibition, Mendini made

his rst demonstrative act by publishing the im-age of a gorilla taken from a postcard from theMuseum of Natural History in New York, which hehad bought at the MoMA. Mendini modied theimage by adding the words radical design to theanimals chest and, with an act of re-signicationin Dadaist style (like Marcel Duchamps mous-tachioed Mona Lisa), portrayed the new Italianavant-garde christened radical by GermanoCelant with the belligerent look of a gorilla: thesymbol of primitive man who roams around theworld in search of new paths, in opposition totechnological man who, reassured by the mythof progress, moves, in total darkness, along amotorway with a guaranteed toll-gate and litup by many neon lights. In the ideological con-text of the early 1970s, strongly critical towardsconsumer society and largely imbued with themood of the libidinous aesthetics of MarcusesEros and Civilization , Mendini matured his own vi-sion of the world with a project approach that was

at once literary and iconographic, which turned

his desecrating use of images, accompaniedby recourse to a writing technique similar to theaphorism, into an instrument that sharply criticizedRationalism, Functionalism, and technologism thathad no real goal if not that of industry. The gorillacover indeed inaugurated a successful series inwhich some images of objects (photographs ordrawings) were shown on a full-page spread us-ing the techniques of the paradox, the grotesqueand the performance transferred from thelanguage of the early twentieth-century artisticavant-gardes so as to instrumentally expresscertain concepts and thoughts that adhered tothe meaning of their being in the world and notto their mere practical functionality or aestheticintentionality.Mendini called them objects for spiritual use:some were drawn in a sketched out manneras though they were proto-forms; others werebuilt to be destroyed straight afterwards (this

was the case of the Lass chair); others still had

Eastern gorilla, photomontagefor the cover ofCasabella ,no. 367, 1972


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Sedia Terra, Bracciodiferrofor Cassina, 1975

ironically named Lass (a chair hard to haveaccess to) was a small domestic monument, athrone that once conquered (its not easy to sit on!)offered anyone the chance to be a protagonist,transforming ones own home into a stage or acabinet of curiosities. On the cover of Casabella (no. 391, 1974) the chair is pictured at the momentof its destruction among the ames, stimulatingthought, which acquires renewed actuality today,on the mortal destiny of objects, similar to thatof people, whose place in life is soon occupiedby other presences. In Sedia Terra, real particlesof soil were stowed away inside a stereometricform made of Plexiglass, thus making the mostprimitive material that exists inaccessible andprecious, so as to turn ones attention to the al-

ienated relationship between man and nature

unlikely sizes and forms (like the Scivolavo chair),or else were built with materials that made theiruse impossible (Valigia for the nal journey, theBauhaus-style lamp) or limited in time (the Strawarmchair). They were all self-built objects (al-most all one-of-a-kind) that unhinge the usualrationale attributed to their function; they weremeant to oppose the most attractive high-levelserially produced objects, they were made for anelementary survival, and they took on the mean-ing of places where to perform eternal thoughts,where one can be conscious from one hour tothe next of ones own condition as someone whois alive. In respect to the aridity and the rhetoricof Functionalism they staked a claim of spiritualitythat deliberately transcended any realistic refer-

ence to production and consumption. The chair


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infelicitous project. The idea was that of a cynicalacceptance of reality, which, although not beingpacied with the industrial system (from which itremained extraneous), no longer believed in theabstract contraposition of ideologies, and insteadhinged around the reconstruction of the objectstarting from the observation of everyday realityand its complexity. The periodical sought possiblenew roads of cross-pollination between differentdisciplines, giving broad scope to graphics, to

photography, to design, to architecture and evento fashion (a sector at the time considered to bewholly extraneous to the culture of the project)mixing them and multiplying them in a kaleido-scope of images and languages. Within this fertilehumus Mendinis idea of redesign developed,understood as a new visual language that aimedto give new meaning to existing things, workingby overlaps and cross-pollination: I invent andat the same time I copy, because in the panthe-ism of the huge Milky Way of goods, everythingthat I can think of already exists: whats impor-tant is that my way of forging things is original(Originalit del falso , 1997). At this point Mendini,attaching great importance to the visual andcommunicational aspect, worked on a doubleregister: on the one hand, with the redesign ofsix famous designer chairs (the Thonet no. 14,the Superleggera by Ponti, the Sedia Universaleby Joe Colombo, the Zig Zag by Rietveld, and soon), to which he added a few new elements andsigns (arrows, ags, decors, colours, etc.); with atouch of irony he modied their aspect, removingtheir aura as design icons; on the other, he enno-bled four anonymous sideboards from the 1940s,decorating them extensively with styles borrowedfrom the historical avant-gardes of Constructivismand Futurism. Similarly, in his series dedicated toKandinsky, Mendini took three ordinary objectslike a sofa, a carpet and a plain and simple mir-ror, gave them a Cubist form, and covered themwith a colourful galaxy of confetti, tails, comets,

Tarots, snakes etc., this time borrowing the styles

in a world that is increasingly projected towardsthe utmost articiality. The chair was no longer afunctional object but instead became a reliquaryof a lost thing: Residues similar to the earthcould be owers, grass, ash, food, manure. Theuse of residues, heaps, waste products of thingsand memories of ones life to organize ones ownliveable surroundings is a healthy way to expandin the environment inside oneself (Casabella ,no. 390, 1974).

Mendinis objects for spiritual use sounded outnew experiences, they were food for thoughtand raised questions. Medini himself wondered:Where do we look for outlets? Inside or outside thediscipline of design? A rst answer to this crucialquestion was the creation in 1974 of Global Tools,an alternative school promoted by the periodicalCasabella itself, which saw the participation, apartfrom Mendini, of the groups Archizoom, UFO andSuperstudio, and again Gaetano Pesce, EttoreSottsass, Ugo La Pietra, Gianni Pettena. The aimwas to cast doubt over the role of the architectand the designer as technicians at the service ofthe economic system, and to elaborate an ideaof the anti-specialist and the anti-disciplinaryproject, fuelled by the introduction of differentpoints of view, perhaps even extraneous to thetradition of architecture.The road that was singled out was that of therecovery of manual work, setting craftsmanshipagainst Industrial Design, in the wake of the bat-tles fought in England by John Ruskin and WilliamMorris in the nineteenth century projecting it,however, in the utopian dimension of a creativ-ity sensitive to the moods of society and its moredisparate cultural fringes.In 1977, the departure from Casabella and thecreation of the new magazine called MODO, entirely conceived and founded by Mendini,coincided with the more decisive turnaround inthe direction of so-called anti-design; this was anew phase that replaced the pure and tough

opposition against the system with the so-called


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function, it is a stable, anthropological valuethat humanity has always measured itself up to,and that being supercial has a very strongemotional and symbolic impact and respondsto needs and desires even when these are un-conscious and irrational.In 1980, at the First Architecture Biennial, Mendinitogether with Alchimia promoted the exhibitionon Loggetto banale (The banal object) which,by contemplating production in a large series, at-

tempted to answer this question: Why not exploitthe natural, intimate and legendary relationshipthat is created between man and an object judgedto be ugly in any mass society? Unsurprisingly,it was precisely the theme of ugliness that wasdealt with in Abraham Moles well-known essay(Psychologie du kitsch), signicantly retitledkitsch: lart du bonheur, or the art of happiness.Mendinis new interpretation focused on themesof interest to everyday life, on the importance ofmaterial culture linked to objects of mass con-

sumption, to the universal nature of the articialdimension and to the need for a psychologicalstudy of mans relationship with the environment.And all without demonizing the difference bet-ween an aesthetic high and low, and with aneye focused on the gure of the everyman. Theterm banal therefore signies an awareness ofthe everyday as a new eld of study by means ofwhich to challenge the rules of good taste andBeautiful Design, capable of releasing new crea-tive energies and bestowing new meanings (byway of redesign and restyling) to objects that hadbecome exhausted and stripped of their meaning.This meant reconceptualizing the designers roleas an intellectual, which would be reconrmed in1985 in the introduction to the rst Italian transla-tion of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Browns cultbook Learning from Las Vegas ; Mendini dened thesituation at the time as neo-modernism (a sort ofmannerism of great twentieth-century modernity)characterized by the advent of a banal architec-

ture. The anthropological value of what is ugly and

directly from the painting of the Russian master.A double ready-made of Dadaist inspiration wasthe designers celebrated Proust armchair, wherehe took a chair in Baroque style and covered itwith a citation from apointilliste painting by Sig-nac. Dotting, done by hand with a small brush,conferred lightness and atmosphere to the object,which acquired a new meaning strongly allusiveto the fragmentary statute of the reality in whichwe live. A reality that can no longer be comprised

within a univocal general and synthetic vision, inthe same way that society cannot be understoodas a uniform mass of indistinct people, but as thesum of single individuals. The semantic force ofthis object is such that in time it has lent itself tofurther operations of manipulation by its author,who has had fun blowing it up, making it smaller,modifying the texture and the materials used tomake it, proposing a seemlingly endless varietyof versions. All these objects together with oth-ers by Branzi, Dalisi, De Lucchi, Navone, Raggi,

Sottsass, UFO, etc. were a part of the Bau-Hauscollection promoted in 1979 by a new avant-gardegroup, Studio Alchimia, founded in Milan in 1976by Alessandro Mendini and Adriana Guerrierotogether with Bruno and Giorgio Gregori. The ideawas to give rise to an autonomous production ofnon-industrial furnishings to set self-productionagainst industry, painting to the project, the draw-ing to the design and to propose these objectsto the public by means of a series of installations.Mendini claried the theoretical bases in thegroups manifesto: Today, for Alchimia the workof the draughtsman is of essential importance.Drawing, that is, emitting signs, is neither designnor project: it is a free and continuous movementof thought thats visually expressed.Within this perspective decoration took on acrucial role refused programmatically by or-thodox Rationalism, but practiced in one of itstopical places of formation like the Bauhaus ofWeimer which in Mendinis poetics would take

on an increasingly central role because, unlike


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Redesign of 1940s sideboards,picture touched up withan airbrush, 1978

Its utmost expression was the group performanceof the Mobile Innito, enacted in 1980 at the Mi-lan Polytechnics Faculty of Architecture, wherearchitects, artists and designers, under Mendinisdirection, created a sequence (indeed, aninnite one) of furniture elements (containerfurniture items, tables, beds, bookcases, etc.)conceived of as a surreal parade of self-ironicand animated characters. The objects that wereput on stage broke down the functional rationale

and alluded, in a prophetic manner, to a futuredomestic landscape whose functions are shuf-ed, where the traditional, rigid subdivision intorooms equipped for elementary functions wasovercome. Apartments that, instead of a livingroom, kitchen, toilet and bedroom, would haverooms for swimming, for growing plants, for talking,reading books [] one could eat in the swimmingroom, wash in the plant-growing room, sleep in thelibrary [] and the living room of the future couldbe seen as the headquarters of long-distance

communication (Il nuovo soggiorno, in Domus ,no. 630, 1982). What was being contested was theso-called authoriality (really the brand in gen-

what is kitsch was acknowledged, and the visualpollution of consumer society, as an active partof the project, was consecrated; this was followedby an invitation to dirty the works with their userssubconscious creativity.The end of 1979 was important for Mendini as hetook over the running of the magazine Domus, which he would continue to do for the next veyears; those were the years of the greatest dissemi-nation of postmodernist culture, whose outcomes

would have a great impact on the changes incurrent tastes, inexorably arriving at embracing,in a striking manner, the design of the everydayobject and even the current series production.In actual fact, Mendini prefers to speak of neo-modern, equating the condition of those yearsto historical Mannerism, which did not subvertthe classical rules of the project, but was limitedto corroding them from the inside with the acidsof its criticism and its hermetic irony. The rstpremise cast into doubt was that of the authorsindividuality, a theme that since then has beenembraced by Mendini in the systematic mannertypical of a laboratory experiment.


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Achenzina, desk,Collezione Nuova Alchimia,Zabro, Zanotta, 1986

100% Make up,collection of 100 vases,drawing, Alessi, 1992

bearers (in decor, ornamentation, textures, etc.)of values independent from ideologies.But the 1980s, after one decade of self-producedresearch objects, also marked the encounterbetween Mendini and serial production; two pro-fessional situations with a human side developed,which saw him involved with entrepreneurs likeAlberto Alessi and Aurelio Zanotta. The challengein both cases was played out by overcoming theconict between original and serial objects, between

art and industry. Mendini managed to exploit thecharacteristics of reproducibility typical of industrywithout betraying himself, without turning into anindustrial designer, but by creating a new category,that of useful art, which breaks down the barri-ers between art, craftsmanship and industry, thusinterpreting the specicity of the designers work. Asregards Zanotta, the manufacturing of furniture ina series that was hand-decorated, inlaid, carvedor screen-printed in the three collections calledNuova Alchimia (1984-1986), hence, with a return

to the techniques used by artisans that had begunto vanish, healed the fracture between craftsman-ship and industry, inaugurating the so-called newcraftsmanship. For Alessi, instead, Mendini workedon the concepts of the multiple, the limited editionand the diversied series, seeking to overcome therift between art and industry: whereas in his teaand coffee service Tea & Coffee Piazza (1983), bylaunching mini-architectures he transposed intothe eld of design the theme of the art multiple ina limited edition, in the project called 100% Makeup (1992) he instead dealt with the theme of thediversied series by asking one hundred differentartists to decorate a one-off vase model that hehad designed. The crucial theme of decoration inthe sense of universal cosmetic, introduced bythe Proust armchair and its numerous replicas andvariants, had a repercussion on the manufacturingof large series of objects when Mendini, in 1990,was appointed artistic director of the Swiss watchfactory Swatch, reviving it on the market thanks to a

plan for its promotion that was both economic and

eral) of design, perdiously snapping the bondbetween designer and project and between thesingle item and serial production, according to aprogramme of destabilization that would investboth architecture (the Groninger Museum, forinstance, as an assembly of parts by differentauthors) and design itself (Tea & Coffee Piazza).Likewise the magazine Ollo (1987) consisted ofthe application of the method of communica-tion strategy; this was a quarterly for which onlytwo issues were published, where not only art,design, architecture and fashion were blendedtogether without distinction, but even advertisingand the editorial contents were graphically mixedto the point of not being immediately distinguish-able from one another. Ollo was a magazinewith almost no texts (the name itself is an act ofsemantic Dadaism), where the image took on apredominant and obsessive value, increasinglyfocusing attention on the terrorism of visibility inpostmodern societies, on the interchangeability

of meanings, and on the obsession for surfaces as


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Tte Gante, breglass-coatedpolystyrene sculpture, 2002.In the background, Proust sofa and painting,Muzeum Narodowe, Poznan, Poland

inexhaustible kaleidoscope of images, Mendinimust have experienced the feeling of somehowbeing caged inside; so to react to the reicationof himself, he used the technique of metaphysicalbewilderment to work on image. For example, byenlarging things (the Mobili per Uomo, but alsothe Lass chair revived at a distance of twenty-veyears as a monument to be placed at the centreof a square in the German city of Otterbach); orby xing the decoration (the Byzantine vision of

gold, from the Alessi vase to the Shama installa-tions) combined with the archaic neo-primitivism(Visage Archaque) of gures similar to totems, withthe obsessive rewriting of his own story.A story that had started in 1973 with the roughMonumentino chair, and had reached, in 2004, hissolemn golden monumentalization: from beingan involuntary emblem, then, of arte povera, toa chilly representation of an increasingly contigu-ous archetype, a sacred micro-architecture. Asif by sitting himself down on his Proust armchair,Mendini had started his own personalrecerche in the meanders of a memory that was anythingbut linear. Actually porous, labyrinthine and evendispersive, as represented in the most autobio-graphical of his works: the 2010 exhibitionQualicose siamo held at the Triennale in Milan.

cultural, thus defeating the Japanese competition.This same theme then took on an autonomousstatute in the design of laminate surfaces, withthe honing of a specic range of decors, signs,styles and colours that could be used in the dif-ferent scales of the project, from the object to thefurnishing, to the architecture. Cases in point arethe exterior nishing of the tower of the GroningerMuseum (1988-1994), essentially a macro version,with large brushstrokes, of the pointilliste technique

Mendini had used for the Proust armchair, or theenamelled and serigraph metal sheet panels of theCasin di Arosa in Switzerland (1997), or the yellowand black checkerboard texture of the Steintorstop for the Hannover tram (1992). There was alsothe work done for the Swatch and Alessi stores byAtelier Mendini, the productive unit founded in 1989with his brother Francesco, which also coincidedwith the growth of his architectural work. In the1990s, Mendini reached the peak of his profes-sional success and his utmost fame; fortunately,the growth of his work did not correspond to aweakening of his critical thinking nor to his interestin experimentation. The years of criticism of theproductive system were by then something fromthe distant past, and provocation was replaced bydeformation. After having created an apparently


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I design objects that are moreor less functional, ones that tendto be small and also occasional,as Im interested in their form,

material, colour [...] my yearningisnt that of the functionalist designer

who designs things for everybody.My approach to design is essentially

artistic and from a technicalstandpoint it corresponds to a sort

of technological craftsmanship.La bottega del designer , 1990


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Nine miniatures, Short Stories,drawing, 2004


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1975SCIVOLAVO CHAIR

MONUMENT FOR THEHOME (PERFORMANCE)

BANAL OBJECT

Catalogue of Objects

1981 1990REDESIGN DESIGNERCHAIRS

ENDLESS FURNITURE

ZABRO

LAMP WITHOUT LIGHT

STRAW CHAIR PROUST

KANDISSI TEA & COFFEE PIAZZA

SIRFO

OLLO COSMESIS SWATCH

METROSCAPE SWATCH

REDESIGN 40SSIDEBOARD

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1978 1980

SUITCASE FOR FINALJOURNEY


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LAMINATE SURFACES

ALESSANDRO M.ANNA G.

100% MAKE UP

GALAXY COLLECTION

AURORA

FIORUCCI,SWATCH SHOP

2010

MENS FURNITURE

SAN FRANCISCO SCIVOLAVO,SHORT STORIES

EUCLIDE

MICRO MACRO MONUMENTAL PROUSTSMALL ELECTRICALAPPLIANCES

WARRIOR ANGEL

GIOTTO

ASTA

MONUMENT FOR THEHOME

CARTIER COLUMN ANNA TOILE

SUPEREGO COLUMNS

35

2003


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The Objects


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Chairs that burn amidst the ames or that oatin space like the planets, giant chairs madefrom straw or that feature dramatically tiltedplanes, lamps cast in bronze but with no light,

and a suitcase fastened to the ground thatcant be lifted: these are some of the irreverentobjects for spiritual use that Mendini designedin the early 1970s to express his radical criticismof a production system exclusivelybased on functionality, obedientto a society built upon the all-embracing legends oftechnology, efciency andconsumption. These are allresearch objects designednot to be placed on the market

but as one-off pieces, to the extent that anumber of them were born out of visualperformances conceived for the covers of theperiodical Casabella . This is scenic furniture for

fake interiors, which, by way of form, material orsize, unhinges the usual rationale attributed toits function and through which Mendini wishesto stimulate a critical reection on the

behaviour linked to its use, such asworking, talking, eating, sleeping,etc., bringing to the design spherethat performative attitude basedon the visual paradoxes that hadbeen developed in the early twentieth

century by such artistic avant-garde movements as Dadaismand Surrealism.

OBJECTS FOR SPIRITUAL USELASS CHAIR, TABLE AND CHAIR IN SPACE, STRAW CHAIR, SCIVOLAVOCHAIR, LAMP WITHOUT LIGHT, SUITCASE FOR THE FINAL JOURNEYYears: 1974-1975

Lass chair,drawing, 1975


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Rocking chair, drawing, 1975Table and chair in space,cover forCasabella , no. 399, 1975Monumentino da casa,performance, 1975


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Scivolavo chair and Elisa whenshe was a child, 1975

Scivolavo chair, stainless steel,

Short Stories, 2010

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Letargo lamp, drawingon transparency, 1975Lamp without light, Bauhausredesign, bronze, Bracciodiferrofor Cassina, 1975Straw chair, 1975Suitcase for the nal journey,

aluminium, 1975


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Redesign of chairs from the ModernMovement, drawings, 1978

opposite page from left,redesign of the following chairs:Zig Zag by Gerrit Rietveld; Superleggeraby Gio Ponti; Thonet no. 14;

Sedia Universale by Joe Colombo


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The idea behind redesign means producing afamily of objects a sofa, a mirror and a wallhanging which all have the same decorativepattern in common, born out of the synergy of

gurative motifs borrowed from Czech Cubism,Deperos Italian Futurism, and Kandinskyspainting, to whom the whole series isdedicated. Mendinis skill lies in his ability tointerpret some of the most important twentieth-century avant-garde movements Cubism,Futurism and Abstractionism as a repertoire ofsigns that can be combined, juxtaposed orrewritten, breathing life into a new visualalphabet that spreads out on the surface of hisobjects and decorates them. In the case of theKandissi sofa and the Kandissa mirror, the decoris independent and vital, so that it changes thevery shape of the objects, projecting them intodifferent directions in space: the paintinggenerates the decoration, which in turngenerates the objects. Within this same realm isthe use of colour as an instance of idealhappiness to offer all of mankind, and elementthat, during that period, explodedunexpectedly in the designers work.

KANDISSI FAMILYKANDISSI SOFA, KANDISSONE WALL HANGING, KANDISSA MIRROR,ALCHIMIA COLLECTION, BAU-HAUS SIDE ONEYear: 1978-1979

Kandissi sofa, 1978


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PROUST ARMCHAIRYear: 1978Materials: wood and painted fabric

The idea for this particular object came fromthe yearning to dedicate an armchair to thegreat French writer by proceedingunconventionally and by literary decision, i.e.

without actually drawing it but rather bycovering a banal faux -Baroque armchair withsome of the details from the meadows paintedby Paul Signac, and in this case painted with abrush directly onto the fabric itself. Theconception of time as an accumulation ofendless memories and fragments of memoryevoked by Proust in hisRecherche is visualizedby Mendini in the pointillist weave that coversthe whole armchair, from the wooden parts tothe upholstery, undoing form and makingeverything seem lighter. The result of this twofoldready-made is a whole new image, a complexand deliberately ambiguous one that sets thefaux, which recalls the antique (the vintagearmchair), on the same level as the new, asexpressed by the avant-garde (pointillism). Witha totally cerebral approach of the Dadaist kind,which refutes drawing but not painting, theProust armchair expresses its status as an objectthat is never nished, bestowing life, over time,to a series of multiples, identical in substancebut different in form, time after time modifyingtheir dimensions (by shrinking or enlarging),materials (from bronze to ceramics), decor(hand-painted, printed, and so on).

Proust and Sabrina armchairs,drawing for Interno di un Interno , 1991

Monumental Proust mosaic chair,

3 x 3 metres in size, Bisazza, 2005


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from the leftGeometrica armchair,Cappellini, 2009Proust armchair, 1978Mozart armchair, paintedby Claudia Mendini, 2000


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The intrinsic modernity of a material like laminateconstitutes the perfect support for a graphic-likereproduction of decorative systems, and offersMendini the chance to ne-tune several textures

based on specic decors, signs and styles. Thusare born the Ollo, Swatch, Proust, Swatch Atlanta,Proust Groningen, Galla Placidia Piccolo, GallaPlacidia Grande and Oro Nero series that expressdifferent forms of visual script and draw theviewers attention. They can be applied to theworld of objects (Mobile Innito, Zabro collection,Ollo series, etc.), to wallpaperas was donefor the exhibition spaces and stands for Alessiand Swatchand to exterior architecturalsurfaces. One such example concerns thelarge panels in gilt laminate and polychromelaminate for the Groninger Museum, and theblack-and-gold checkerboard laminate fora tram stop in Hannover. Within the realmof a conception of art, design and architecturewhere decoration takes on a key role, a transferof textures from one project to another, evenif this means leaps in scale from the object tothe building and vice versa, becomes possible.

DECORS, STYLES AND LAMINATE SURFACESYears: from 1980Company: Abet Laminati

Galla Placidia Grande,laminate, project with Alchimiaand Anna Lombardi, Abet, 1989Swatch, laminate, projectwith Fulvia Mendini, Abet, 1996


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Groninger Museum, drawings, 1990

pp. 58-59Shama, installation, projectwith Alex Mocika and Elisa Mendini,Groninger Museum Collection,The Netherlands, 1992


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On September 18, 1981, in the courtyard of theMilan Polytechnic Faculty of Architectureviewers witnessed a performance by MobileInnito, a group action that involved a large

number of architects and artists directed byAlessandro Mendini in collaboration with StudioAlchimia. The aim was to bring about a freesequence that would ideally unfold endlessly ofall the elements that make up the usualtypologies of domestic furniture - containers,chairs, tables and lamps - with a radicallyeclectic approach to the project: each singleobject was indeed the result of the assembly ofdifferent parts (legs, handles, decorations,

decorative objects, etc.) designed by differentauthors independently and deliberatelyuncoordinated. The decors for the interiorsfeatured, with a taste for citation, the

reproduction of some of the designs by BrunoMunari (1947), Gio Ponti (1952), and LuigiVeronesi (1973). The result of this action was acheery parade of objects in celebration,embellished, decorated and coloured withbanners, feathers, signs, gures, ags, rods andarabesques, that took on uncertain, mysteriousand dreamlike appearances, as if they were thephysical transposition of the hallucinations andenchantments that trouble our minds.

MOBILE INFINITO (ENDLESS FURNITURE)Project with: Alchimia and othersYear: 1981

Mobile Innito, collection skyline,drawing, 1981


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Decoration of the table top La morte che mangialuva by Francesco Clemente, magnetic decorationsby Sandro Chia, Enzo Cucchi and Mimmo Paladino;legs by Denis Santachiara, decorations inside byAlchimia, Bruno Munari, Gio Ponti and Luigi Veronesi.


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The research that led to Tea & Coffee Piazzawas born out of a sharp insight: the idea oftransposing to the design realm the theme ofso-called art multiples by applying them to an

icon of the domestic world like the tea andcoffee service, so as to stimulate productinnovation in the home goods sector. Involvedin the project were some of the most promisingyoung architects of those years, who bestowedlife on a full-edged collection of micro-architectures for the home featuring a stronglyexpressive and individual nature. The project100% Make up is a reection upon a similartheme in the designers diversied series: 100vases all identical in shape designed byMendini himself decorated by 100 differentauthors (artists, architects, designers and otherstoo) and produced in 100 units each, for a totalof 10,000 pieces. A choral work that breaksdown the concept of the anonymous industrialseries, to instead offer a constellation of visualtales expressing the force of the ornament aslanguage that is at once universal andindividual. The tendency towards multiplicationis also visible in Anna G. and Alessandro M. whoappear to be real characters each with theirown personality, a rich wardrobe, and evencapable of having a family (Anna G. Family).

AESTHETIC FACTORYTEA & COFFEE PIAZZA, 100% MAKE UP, ANNA G., ALESSANDRO M., ASTA

Years: 1983, 1992, 1994, 2004Company: Alessi

Tea & Coffee Piazza, silver tea andcoffee service, project by MariaChristina Hamel, Alessi, 1983

Asta, stainless steel atware, project

with Annalisa Margarini, Alessi, 2004


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100% Make up, drawing foran exhibition, Alessi, 1992100% Make up, porcelainvase decorated by MarahVoce, Alessi, 1992

100% Make up: Golden vase,porcelain, Alessi Tendentse, 1992


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Alessandro M., drawing, Alessi, 2003Anna G. and Alessandro M. Proust,corkscrew, project with Piero Gaetaand Annalisa Margarini, Alessi, 2003

Alessandro M. and Anna G.,

drawings, Alessi, 2003


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The three Zabro collections represent a spin-offon the level of production in a series of theexperiments Mendini conducted with StudioAlchimia: the idea was to go from the self-

produced furniture that had characterizedthat highly creative season, to the realizationof furniture built to the highest professionalstandards, paying close attention to the minutestdetail. The designers collaboration witha leading company in themanufacturing of so-called Bel DesignItaliano, such as theAurelio Zanottacompany, proved to bea winning choice also interms of the productscommercial success. Theidea was to breathe new life

into a collection of original objects that couldstay on the market, while at the same time keepthe Alchimia experience alive without betrayingits original spirit. To do this the designer modied

his palette of colours towards softer and moreclassical hues, such as in the Cetonia chest ofdrawers, or by inventing new typologies, such asthe table-chair, or inventing new gurative

solutions, for instance, Mendinisfamous duck-shaped Sirfo

table reminiscent of WaltDisney cartoons, introducing

the concept of ironic designand the comic-strip object.None of these objects pass by

unnoticed, and their shapesallude to a lively and joyousorganic universe, transcendingthe abstract and rigid dimensionof the rational.

ZABROCOLLEZIONE NUOVA ALCHIMIA

Years: 1984, 1985, 1986Company: Zanotta

Agrilo, drawing, Zabro, Zanotta, 1984

Cetonia, chest of drawers, CollezioneNuova Alchimia, Zabro, Zanotta, 1984Sirfo, side table, Collezione NuovaAlchimia, Zabro, Zanotta, 1986Agrilo, console table, Collezione

Nuova Alchimia, Zabro, Zanotta, 1984


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Mikiolone, cocktail cabinet,Collezione Nuova Alchimia,Zabro, Zanotta, 1986

Zabro, table-chair, Collezione NuovaAlchimia, Zabro, Zanotta, 1984


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The Ollo series was unveiled in 1987 with an installationmade up of three paintings, three shelves and a vase,presented at Documenta 8 in Kassel, Germany. Thesacred nature of the representation emerges from

the design of universal styles, such as the motif on thecolumn and the arch, that leaps from the two-dimensionality of the drawing to the three-dimensionality of the objects as tools of pure visualreality; this is based on the concept of the extensionof the design that stems from Futurism and from itsutopia of covering the whole universe with signs. TheOllo forms are the expression of a painterly design:they are born out of the continuous and free unfoldingof thought and in no way involve planning andorganization in the project phase. This new visualalphabet is translated by the Alchimia group intothings furniture, carpets, vases, glassware,decorations and fabrics which are produced in alimited edition. Ollo is also the name of a magazinewithout a message in which Mendini deals withthemes that differ greatly from one another (kitsch,hunger, theatre, sex, sport, death, and so on) bymatching images freely (the pages are not bound,nor is there a table of contents and the only text is theeditorial); each one of its readers can assemble themagazine in any way he or she wishes, foreshadowingthe hypertext of more recent times.

OLLO: A NEW ALPHABETCOLLEZIONE ALCHIMIAYears: 1987-1990

Ollo, bookshelf, Collezione Achimia, 1988

Ollo, Collezione Alchimia of furnitureand objects, installation, Milan, 1988Magical Neo-Functionalism, installation,Genius Loci II, project with Carla Ceccariglia

and Anna Gili,Abitare il tempo , Verona, 1989


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Mendinis appointment as artistic director of theSwiss watch factory gave him the chance tobring the concept of pictorial design, whichhe had already expressed while experimenting

with the Proust armchair, to new commercialheights. The design for a Swatch watchcoincides with the decor of its surface which,like a kaleidoscope, is open to never-endingand innite variations of images, signs andcolours; the choice of specic themes ethnic,neo-naturalist, primordial, neo-classical,totemic, etc. is the result of the joint effortmade by a number of architects, designers andartists, who work the same way stylists do onfashion collections. An object thats technicallyperfect, with a high aesthetic quality but low-priced, thus effortlessly overcomes thedimension of needing to be useful. It becomesa cult, a collectors item and, most importantly,a means of communication that anyone canwear to express his or her personality, state ofmind or world vision. Atelier Mendini hasdesigned hundreds of exhibition spaces, salespoints and shops for the Swatch company,using a language that is easily recognized for itsplayful, dreamlike and colourful nature,bringing all the scales of the project(architecture, interior decoration, the object)within a single alluring visual imaginary.

DECORATING TIMEYears: 1990-1994Company: Swatch

Swatch watch, drawing, 1990


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Crystal Surprise, wristwatch, Swatch, 1993Lots of dots, wristwatch, Swatch, 1992Cosmesis, wristwatch, Swatch, 1990

Metroscape, wristwatch, Swatch, 1990


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Swatch Shop, Via Cesare Battisti,project with Francesco Mendiniand Andrea Balzari, Padua, 1996

Fiorucci, Swatch Shop, projectwith Francesco Mendini and AndreaBalzari, Milan, 1992


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The Galassia (Galaxy) collection for Veniniconsists of large lamps with fanciful namesalluding to mythological gures forinstance, Alioth, Agena, Antares, Aldebaran,

Achemar and Arkab that, like planetsaround a galaxy, revolve around their ownaxis in a space that stretches into innity.Mendini interprets the theme of the lamp not just as a functional object used for its lightingfeatures, but also as an emotional objectcapable of engendering visual suggestionsin the observer. Mendinis collaboration withMurano glassmakers gave him theopportunity to experiment with the differentways of working with a pliable material likeglass, modifying the paste, the decor, and,above all, its colours and transparency. Thechandelier called Achenar represents amodern reinterpretation of the traditionalVenetian chandelier; it is simple in geometry(circles, spheres and cylinders) andembellished with colour. The Agena lamp,along with the other four oor lamps, insteadalludes to biological forms, some of whichmonstruous (but the colour keeps it ironic),while others are more closely linked to aspatial imaginary made up of discs, ringsand spheres. Lamps playing the part of merryluminous objects that inhabit our homes.

LUMINOUS OBJECTSGALASSIA COLLECTION

Year: 1993Company: Venini


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Alioth, Murano glass oor lamp,Collezione Galassia, Venini, 1993

Agena, Murano glass pendant lamp,Collezione Galassia, Venini, 1993Aldebaran, Murano glass oor lamp,

Collezione Galassia, Venini, 1993


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These small kitchen appliances are born froman unprecedented but fruitful collaborationbetween the multinational Philips, a high-techmanufacturer and a world leader in theproduction of electrical appliances, and Alessi,an Italian company, which instead wants to beknown as a cutting-edge aesthetic factory,attentive to both experimentation and forms. Thechallenge consisted in designing complexobjects to be manufactured in a series, thuscrossing design that is strictly functionalist andperhaps excessively subordinated to marketing,with a freer humanistic dimension capable of

conveying new meanings at a cultural,psychological and semantic level turning thekitchen into a more pleasant and people-friendly environment. The result of this wasa small family of Neo-Pop objects that, in ahyperrealistic key, offer a possible solution tomodernitys typical dialectic between articeand nature: the rounded shapes of theseobjects, which are meant to bring to mind therst plastic appliances of the 1950s and 60s, aredesigned to look like stones smoothed over bywater in faded colours, as if the user had comeacross those objects in a fast-running stream.

SMALL ELECTRICAL APPLIANCESTOASTER, KETTLE, COFFEE MAKER, CITRUS SQUEEZER

Year: 1994Company: Philips by Alessi


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Philips by Alessi, coffee maker interpreted by Jacovitti, 1994


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The presence of anthropomorphic objectscrosses the history of mankind: nding oneselfbefore an object that has a face resemblingthat of a human being immediately creates a

sympathetic tie that makes it easier to establishan amicable relationship with the object.Mendini believes in this type of relationshipand over the last decade he has produced acollection of gigantic oversized heads madeby combining basic geometric shapes, builtfrom a variety of materials, and inspired by theprimitive art of Russian Constructivism. ForFragilisme , an exhibition organized by theFondation Cartier pour lart contemporainin Paris, 2002, he designed a cheerful andcolourful breglass head, and that same yearhe brought out his Visage arcaque, a precioushand-cut gold mosaic wearing a crystal jewelby Swaroski. For Venini, he created a series ofglass heads the Glass Warrior and the WarriorAngel that have something enigmatic andmenacing about them: Their most archaicreferences are the statues on Easter Island, theirmost future references are the unknown guresof creatures from other planets. With theirsubtle, elongated and ambiguous black eyes[...] they look pensively upon our complicatedworld [...] could they be the mercenary soldiersof the new intellectual wars? (A. Mendini,Venini. Guerrieri di vetro, 2001, inAlessandroMendini. Scritti , Milan: Skira, 2004).

ANTHROPOMORPHIC OBJECTSVISAGE ARCAQUE, TTE GANTE, GLASS WARRIORS,GIOTTO, WARRIOR ANGEL

Years: 2001-2009Companies: Bisazza, Cartier, Venini

Visage Arcaque, gold mosaic sculpture,Bisazza, 2002, Fondation Cartier pour lartcontemporain, Paris

Giotto, Murano glass sculpture, Venini, 2005


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Angelo Guerriero, Murano glasssculpture, Venini, 2009

Angelo Guerriero, drawings,

Venini, 2007


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nine for the furniture) and expresses some of thethemes Mendini cherishes most of all, such asthe importance of skill, guaranteed here by thecraftsmanship used to make the objects, and the

use of patterns that migrate (to and fro) from thetwo-dimensional surfaces of the carpets to thesculptures and, by growing in size, albeit

remaining coherent, bestowingnew life on the furniture formsand the decors. The collectioncomes from an amusingrecipe: choose severalmaterials, choose severalprocedures, choose severaltypologies, choose severalcolours, mix them all togetherwith a Cleto in a formalisticgame, bring to boiling point

and then serve inthe home or at themuseum in a verystrong light.

The new collection of furniture and objects for thehome designed by Mendini and manufacturedby Cleto Munari in a limited edition includes threepieces of furniture a partition, a closet and a

cocktail cabinet made from wood lacqueredin bright colours. The pieces were perhapsconceived as small architectures for the homethat allude to three different cities:San Francisco, Venice and LosAngeles. There is also a tablecalled Golden Gate, with atransparent glass top engravedwith grafti, patterns and wordsexpressed freely. And alsoa part of the collection isthe series of large silversculptures and fourwoollen carpets.The collection wasproduced in alimited series(an edition of only

ARCHITECTURE FOR THE HOMESAN FRANCISCO, VENICE, LOS ANGELES, GOLDEN GATE

Year: 2008Company: Cleto Munari

San Francisco, spacedivider, Cleto Munari, 2008

Architecture forDomus ,

drawing, 2000


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Los Angeles, cocktail cabinet,Cleto Munari, 2008

Venice, secretary,Cleto Munari, 2008


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Los Angeles, drawing,Cleto Munari, 2008


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The column is a recurring icon in Mendinisfantastic imaginary, and is born out of the juxtaposition of different forms and materialswith the addition of specic dimensional

aberrations that attract the viewers attentionand make him or her reect. The columns inthe Micro Macro collection by Cleto Munariare an experiment with the relationshipbetween constriction and free form: a seriesof vases stacked one atop the other andclosed within a rigid iron cage, with Muranoglass blown freely inside. A sketch of theobject shifts its meaning, so that it becomes asort of skyscraper; if repeated, it creates a cityskyline. Mendinis columns for Superego arehuge anthropomorphic totems, made up ofthe overlapping of different glass and metalorganic and geometric shapes that dialoguelike the actors on a stage. Mendinis columnfor Cartier in 2009 is a reection upon objectlife-cycles: a big jewel over two metres tallmade from stacking up the by-products fromthe cutting of precious stones (rubies, pearls,emeralds, sapphires, etc.), which cannot beused to make jewelry, encapsulated in crystalcylinders inside grooves of pink gold.

COLUMNSYears: 2008-2009Companies: Cleto Munari, Superego, Cartier

Cartier column, drawings, 2007-2009

Salon Prcieux Cartier, gold andgemstone column, project with Young

Hee Cha, Art Basel , Basel, 2009


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Cartier column, detail

Cartier column, drawing, 2007-2009


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Micro Macro: Large Tower, Muranoglass and iron, Cleto Munari, 2003

Micro Macro, drawing,Cleto Munari, 2003


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Columns: Criso, Elgin, Stilobate, Kalamis,ceramics, Superego, 2003


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A New Utopia


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p. 105The designers outt, project with Kean Etro, Etro, 2003

Swatch watch, drawing, 1990

Graziella Leyla Ciag The situation of theMilan Furniture Show is a clear indication of whathas by now become an unstoppable process: theextension of the eld of design to the point that wecan say that everything is design and that there isa design for everything. What do you think?

Alessandro MendiniDesign can be a termenclosed inside what once was, or else it canbe extended to become other things, so far as

to include more extended design phenomena,even virtual ones. I can see it inserted within theparabola of the objects, extended to the millenniaof the applied arts. Design on which I know howto reason produces physical things. Things thatare. I do not deny the other aspects, theres alot of space, from art to mass production. We arealso witnessing the novelty of a technologicalneo-craftsmanship that has nothing to do withthe process of industrial production, but that onlyexploits some industrial components. See how

they make satellites.

G.L.C. What do you think of contemporary design?What suggestions can you give to young designers?

A.M. I never want to give general advice, its just not in my nature to do so. But I do think thattoday design is little inclined to thinking and thatit is very supercial. Whenever I hold workshopsI suggest that the participants concentrate onreasoning, only afterwards can things actuallyhappen. Each one of us has a personal attitudeand works well when he or she has well identiedhim or herself; there are people who have a ra-tional attitude and who know how to develop thefunctional aspect of the object; there are thosewho are more emotional, those who are artists. Ingeneral, I dont speak of design, I prefer to speakof things, and things are actually the mirror ofthe person who owns them. In order to understanda person it is enough to look at the rst hundred

things that surround him or her: each one of us

has a swarm of objects that revolve around usand that come into conict or are in harmony withthose of others. This means that when we design,we always need to keep in mind what were doingand be aware of everything that surrounds us.I am not without sin. I have made objects of greatluxury, I have also made things that are full ofmistakes and this is why my objects include thegood one, the bad one, the nice one, the unluckyone, etc.

G.L.C. What is your working method?

A.M. When I work for myself I have the utmostfreedom: I make something that often simulates a

piece of furniture, but that is actually a sculpture or


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because I want to make some large papier-mchobjects. I am also working on totemic furniture,characters to be placed in the middle of the room to be put opposite each other so I go towardscertain directions and look at certain columns ofthe Buddhist temples that inspire this hypothesisin my mind ...

G.L.C. You said that your work is an attempt tooverturn the negativity of the real. Does this meanthat your objects, with their forms, signs, coloursand decor have, in the nal analysis, the aim ofmaking our lives merry, helping us to live better?

A.M. I am a born pessimist: during the Radical

period I drew bronze objects that emerged from the

a prototype. Instead, when I act as a professional,I nd it dutiful to give my client some answers.There are of course transfers from one experienceto the other: for Swatch I have designed watchesproduced in 120,000 copies at a cer tain price fora given market, but I have also designed limitededition Swatches produced in very small numbers;or else I have transferred my personal stylematicsto objects for Alessi. The projects are presentedas a thesis to be proven: a project starts, I nd a

motivation in it and transform it into an experience.An object can show the virtuosity of blown glass,another symbolic research. I identify some themes,which are born from the project itself, and thenperhaps I load them with induced motivations,which increase their interest. I work at the sametime on very different things in terms of typology,materials and techniques; what keeps them all

joined together is a sort of mesh, a net, that al-lows me to weave the different situations betweenthem. I work at the same time on dozens of projects I cant do just one project at a time sothat they are in synchrony between themselves,one checks the other and they are all inside onesame network of thinking. Some examples arethe theoretical layout for the new season of themagazine Domus , the third edition of the DesignMuseum at the Milan Triennale, and the Deperoexhibition in Rovereto: projects that are related toone another and have evolved together.

G.L.C. Which have been the sources of inspira-tion of your work?

A.M. I work in a very methodical manner, so Iact deliberately; to design spiritual objects I workin a rational way! I am a scholar, I read manybooks, I look at everything, I study, I capture im-ages in blanket fashion. The multiple structure ofthe day-to-day is very interesting for me, becauseit leads me to connecting situations that are ab-solutely different from one another. Right now, Im

particularly interested in the forms of the Baroque

Oggetto Meditativo (MeditativeObject), crystal, project withMichela Pagani, Swarovski, 1999


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Qui, Quo, Qua, container units,Galleria Paolo Curti and AnnamariaGambuzzi, Milan, 2009

A.M. The Lass chair at that moment in historywas a hard performance whose meaning wasto speak of the life and the death of the object,whereas when I go back to it today, by producing asmaller, golden version of it I transform it into a sortof memory, the idol of what it once was. Its a sortof relic. I have always redesigned my objects, I goforwards and backwards and every now and againI get disoriented. The Proust armchair, for example, isa phenomenon that continues to slip away from my

hands, it keeps being reborn on its own account. Ilive in a labyrinthine situation, I nd myself on roadsalready travelled upon, every now and then I getlost, then I go down a new road, often I go back.

ground, or straw armchairs, like a sort of unhappyecology. Then I thought that given the socio-politicalnegativity of the world and its violence, what I couldconcretely do was propose things that arousedsome discussion, thought and spirituality, thatwere self-ironic and that were able to ofoad therhetoric. Stage objects for a tragicomedy which arerelated to one another, even without people beinginvolved. My objects are a kind of backstage propfor a possiblecommedia dellarte .

G.L.C. What sense does it make to reissue todayin a gold version the Radical objects from the1970s, for instance the Lass chair?


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rationales, which are extremely elementary: dontconsume too much, dont move too much, thinkof the daily consequences of what you do.

G.L.C. What do you think of the Internet?

A.M. Access to information via the Internet cancreate problems; for example, looking at hundredsof works of architecture in real time in a solipsisticway certainly does not help us to develop critical

thinking. Indiscriminate access to all that is pseudo-knowable engenders mental confusion. We needto be ne intellects to be able to discriminate.Its an open problem. I think that in the eld ofarchitecture all this is causing harm, but in thepolitical eld, for instance, the current situation inNorth Africa, its doing good.

G.L.C. What does it mean, to use one of yourmost famous expressions, to be sentimental robots?

A.M. I think that, broadly speaking, we are allnon-sentimental robots. Humanism calls for slow-ness, it cant go too fast, it calls for the capacity toread history as if it were a pendulum, going backat least until the Renaissance, if not even the Mid-dle Ages. Sentiment is at the heart of everything.Reason in itself is not reasonable as it is rigid, it ismodern vis--vis postmodern. I strongly believe inthe postmodern even if the word is obsolete. AfterRadical Design, after the Bauhaus (in its spiritualistaspect), after Jean Baudrillard, everything in think-ing changed in relation to the Modern. Before theroad was univocal and linked to the word progress,which for me is the wrong word as it implies the wordproduct, goods or hyper-technological research, itimplies the domination of the economy over man.

G.L.C. How can the domination of the economyand consumer society be offset?

A.M. A revival of Radical Design is taking place

today, which might trigger some new kind of radical

G.L.C. What were the most important artisticmovements for your cultural education?

A.M. Denitely Futurism and Cubism. For thefurniture and objects denitely Czech Cubism(there are some fantastic things at the Museumof Applied Arts in Prague!). The rst gures to inter-est me were Eric Mendelsohn, Antoni Gaud andRudolf Steiner: three hard-core expressionists.Expressionism for me means emotional emphasis

to be placed alongside the most glorious patternsof Futurism. And then, for reasons of personal af-fection, I like to remember Gio Ponti.

G.L.C. In 1976, you theorized the need for thede-project (a U-turn towards a new naturalnessfor man); do you still think this is a practicableprospect? Is there an ethical responsibility on thesocial level in the work of a designer?

A.M. That was the period when Toms Mal-donado had written Design, Nature and Revolution:Towards a Critical Ecology , and, even if we arecompletely on the opposite side from his thinking,I interpret his rational thesis of control as a fact ofmoral self-conscience. Our work calls for dedica-tion, we have an ethical responsibility towardssociety, but as our capacity for a political impactis scarce, I look for morality in the material sense ofthe things I do. For instance, I look for morality, letssay, in the magic of blown glass. At the moment,Im working in Korea with green celadon ceramics,which is still manufactured in medieval wood-redkilns. This sort of retro-dating of ourselves, which isobtained by doing something that was done inthe past, is a formidable experience of decant-ing the neuroses that are so characteristic of ourcontemporaneousness. There are indeed manyways of taking on responsibilities, that must rstof all be taken towards oneself and then towardsones own work. As regards the consumption ofresources, remaining on the level of utopia, it would

be enough if people acted according to certain


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The Useful Art


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p. 113Groninger Museum, golden tower for storage and museumentrance, project with Francesco Mendini and Alchimia,Groningen, The Netherlands, 1989-1994Invited architects: Michele De Lucchi, Philippe Starck,Coop Himmelb(l)au. Laminato Oro, Abet

Black Out: Bar Furniture, Afnit Elettive,project with Alchimia and Anna Gili,Guido Antonello Collection,Milan Triennale, 1984

The earliest publications on the work of AlessandroMendini evolved from within the movements forRadical architecture of the 1970s, and undersco-red his charismatic value as a person who was atthe heart of the various experiences; they pausedupon the designers intense activity as a promoterof exhibitions, performances and collections thatprogrammatically substantiated the groups actionin the early 1980s, from the Elogio del Banale (InPraise of the Banal), to Mobili Inniti (Innite Furni-

ture), and to the Bau-Haus collections.An early attempt to dene Mendinis industriousness,within a broader international context (especial-ly with reference to the Austrian architect HansHollein as regards the theme of memory, and toFrantisek Lesak or Missing Links actions aimedat the rediscovery of the bodys physicality in itsinterrelationship with the environment), was rstsuggested by Fulvio Irace in the catalogue forAs-

senza/Presenza: unipotesi per larchitettura (1977)held at the Galleria Comunale dArte Moderna inBologna. Mendinis behavioural design, his thea-trical objects, would thus be the expression of theanxiety of a memory that has unexpectedly lostthe object of its remembering, and the paradoxesof a cynical and disconsolate reection, strippingbare the impossibility of the function, the irony ofthe unlikely as a critique of consumerism and thetransference to corporealness.

A rst phase that summed up the projects and thethoughts of that period was also provided by theexhibitionAlchimia 1977-1987 (Turin 1986): in theintroduction to the catalogue Franois Burkhardtemphasized Mendinis crucial inuence on theradical changes that took place in the variousdesign sectors, from architecture to interior designto graphics his role as experimental laboratoryhas compelled the professional world to come to


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Lass , monument for Vitra inKreisel Zollfreie Strasse, Otterbach,Nimm Platz in Weil Am Rhein,Germany, 2000

that sank its roots into the artistic craftsmanshipthat preceded the Industrial Revolution and that,because it did not identify with the univocal traditionof Industrial Design, welcomed Mendini (along withSottsass and Pesce) among the protagonists of thenew Italian design, aimed at the recomposingof a possible domestic culture, that is to say, thereconstruction of a system of links and functions thatwere not exhausted in ergonomic and functionalrelationships, but were more broadly cultural andexpressive, between man and the objects of hisown domestic habitat.The notion was also discussed by Giacinto Di Pie-trantonio in the introduction to Atelier Mendini: unautopia visiva (1994), where Mendinis working me-thod is likened to the tradition of the Neo-medievalcommunities of Arts and Crafts in the style of William

Morris, or of the Case dArte of Italian Futurism; with

terms with the postmodern environment in whichit lives, and to look for answers reading therein apossible exit route from the current conict betweenmodernity and post-modernity.Nonetheless, it is worth pointing out that Mendinisposition vis--vis the project did not meet withimmediate critical success; actually, institutionalarchitectural culture circumscribed the scope ofthe Radical experience, and the following one ofpostmodernism, to a transitory fact of dubious in-terpretation, as expressed, for example, in Il Disegnodel Prodotto Industriale (1982) by Vittorio Gregotti,where the events of the neo-avant-gardes are sub-stantially relegated to the short chapter, written byGiampiero Bosoni, called Monumentalizzazione eDistruzione dellOggetto. It was Andrea Branzi, inthe book La Casa Calda (1984), who, in an inverted

key, reviewed the history of an other design, one


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related design cultures even if, in some respects,they are completely different from one another.Mendini belongs to the Italian humanist culture,but he uses a formal international language thatexerts an inuence, on an international level, on thegurative arts, architecture and design. Mendinisrepresentation as an artist, albeit supported byconstant and programmatic relationships withpainters and sculptors, in the 1990s became asort of interpretative stereotype, besides being the

leitmotif of a great deal of the more exegetic orconsensual rather than truly critical literature. Noteven Franz Haks among other things, his interlocutorfor Groninger Museum distances himself from thiscommon belief, underscoring a fundamental aspectof Mendinis position, i.e. that of having been ableto extend the scope of art though his collaborationwith industry and his contribution to entertainmentshopping. By pushing the paradox of the referenceto Walter Benjamin and to his celebrated notionof art in the era of technical reproducibility, Haksthus suggested also envisioning in Mendinis projectperspective his contribution to the structure of thepostmodernist cultural magazine: As early as 1987Mendini showed how important and attractiveadvertising in magazines can be: isnt this also aform of contemporary art within everyones reach,right there at the newsagents on the corner?Emilio Ambaszs portrait of Mendini is, nonetheless,perhaps the most penetrating and least rhetoricalof the artist as intellectual, expressed with the cu-stomary formula of the fairy tale. Mendini, theArgentinian architect and designer wrote, has not just been the creator of many objects, but also acultural thinker and an intellectual who has crea-ted new forms, commenting critically on his socialcondition and making aesthetic references to thedeterioration of mass culture that the industry ofthe Twice-Modern Empire had generated. Mendinisuniqueness consists in expressing himself as anethical hero who, in an apparently contradictoryway, suggests ideas and images without a mora-

listic content.

the difference, however, that while in those casesthe avant-gardes posed as an elite that descendedupon society from above, Mendini implements areverse operation, starting from reality, from the lowone of kitsch culture [] that before everythingelse can be communicated to everyone and foreveryone, thus marking a fundamental passagefrom the aesthetics of experimentation, so dearto the avant-garde groups and to modernity, tothat of the communication of post-modernity. The

success of Radical Designs image and above allof the productivist turnaround that took place inthe 1980s is reected in the dissemination of Men-dinis work to the rest of the world, as witnessed byMichael Collins essay Towards Post-Modernism(1987), in which the architects name is linked tohis theory of the banal object and related to thework he was doing for Alessi at the time. A moresubstantial contribution to the reading of his workwas offered by Peter Wei, who, in the monographAlessandro Mendini. Cose, progetti, costruzioni

(2001) investigated the multiple aspects of Mendiniswork as it relates to art, industry and architecture:Mendini, he wrote, amalgamates architecture,design and painting in one cosmos that, throughits forms, ideas, philosophical theories and its fun-ction as ritual fetish, tries to penetrate the world ofour sentiments. Starting from painting, the formsand the colours are transformed into decorativeelements. The pictorial decoration covers and givesshape to the interiors, to the design products andto the architecture. Mendinis permanent creativemethodology not only produces a conspicuousand supercial variation of the decor, but it alsoevokes the tragedy, the comedy and the dramainherent in the objects themselves.Mendinis role is projected on a much broaderscale as compared with what is usually reservedfor the protagonists of a single discipline, going sofar as to coincide with the image of a theoreticianof culture: Mendini cannot be simply dened as atypical representative of Italian design; rather, he is as

an artist who moves along the boundary between

Atelier Mendini Milan,Alessandro and FrancescoMendinis studio, openedin 1989


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SelectedReferences


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P. Navone, B. Orlandoni, Architettura radicale, Documenti di Casabella , Milan: G. Milani Editrice, 1974.F. Irace,Assenza-Presenza , Bologna: DAuria Editore, 1978.B. Radice (ed.),Elogio del Banale , Milan: Studio Forma Alchimia, 1980.P. M. Rinaldi (ed.),Mobile Innito , Milan: Alchimia Editore, 1981.Studio Alchimia,Bauhaus collection 1980-1981 , Milan: Alchimia Editore, 1981.V. Gregotti,Il disegno del prodotto industriale. Italia 1860-1980 , Milan: Mondadori Electa, 1982.A. Branzi,La casa calda , Milan: Idea Books, 1984.G. Sambonet, Alchimia, 1977-1987 , introduction by F. Burkhardt, Turin: Umberto Allemandi & C., 1986.M. Collins, Towards Post-modernism. Design Since 1851, London: British Museum Publications, 1987.Alessandro Mendini , Milan: Giancarlo Politi Editore, 1989.S. Casciani, G. Di Pietrantonio (eds.),Design in Italia (1950-1990), Milan: Giancarlo Politi Editore, 1991.R. Poletti (ed.),Atelier Mendini: una utopia visiva , Milan: Fabbri Editori, 1994.P. Wei (ed.),Alessandro Mendini. Cose, progetti, costruzioni , Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2001.T. Huiming,Alessandro Mendini, Pioneer of Postmodern Design in Italy , Guangzhou: GuangzhouAcademy of Fine Arts, 2004.B. Finessi,Mendini, Mantua: Edizioni Corraini, 2009.A. Fiz (ed.)Mendini. Alchimie. Dal Controdesign alla Nuove Utopie, exh. cat.,

Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2010.

Books and essays by Alessandro MendiniL. Parmesani (ed.),Alessandro Mendini. Scritti, Fondazione Ambrosetti Arte Contemporanea, Milan:Skira, 2004.S. Annicchiarico (ed.),Pulviscoli. 2469 disegni di Alessandro Mendini. Collezione permanente delDesign Italiano , Triennale di Milano, Milan: Charta, 2005.A. Mendini ed.),Quali cose siamo , exh. cat., Triennale Design Museum, Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2010.Domus , editorials from no. 935 April 2010 to no. 945 March 2011.


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Picture Credits

For all the images related to the work of Alessandro Mendini, Atelier Mendini, Milan.

Atelier Mendini wishes to thank all the photographerswho have taken pictures over the years, and especially:Bergamo & Basso / Atelier Mendini, Milan: 21Riccardo Bianchi / Atelier Mendini, Milan: 8, 9, 10-11Mauro Davoli / Atelier Mendini, Milan: 12-13, 50, 69Ramak Fazel / Atelier Mendini, Milan: 31Alberto Ferrero / Atelier Mendini, Milan: 7, 53, 86-87Giacomo Giannini / Atelier Mendini, Milan: 82, 83Carlo Lavatori / Atelier Mendini, Milan: 27, 48-49, 54-55, 105Salvatore Licitra / Atelier Mendini, Milan: 65, 66Marisa Montibeller / Atelier Mendini, Milan: 100Studio Ombra / Atelier Mendini, Milan: 75Flavio Pannocchia / Atelier Mendini, Milan: 41Ralph Richter / Atelier Mendini, Milan: 60-61

Beba Stoppani / Atelier Mendini, Milan: 113Emilio Tremolada / Atelier Mendini, Milan: 18-19, 73, 117Matteo Tresoldi / Atelier Mendini, Milan: 55 rightTom Vack / Atelier Mendini, Milan: 78, 79, 80

Courtesy of Cartier: 97, 98Courtesy of Casabella: 23, 38Courtesy of The Swatch Group Italy: 76, 77

Copyright holders may contact the Publisher regardingany omissions in iconographic sources, and/or citationswhose original source could not be located.


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Alessandro Mendiniwas born in Milan in 1931.In the 1970s he was one of the leading guresin the avant-garde movement of RadicalDesign, while in the 1980s he was one of thefounding fathers of Italian Neo-Modern Design.Today he is considered a world-class designer.He has directed such prestigious periodicalsas Casabella (1970-1976),MODO (1977-1981),and Domus (1980-1985, 2010). In 1989 he andhis brother Francesco opened Atelier Mendiniin Milan. In addition to his personal researchinto design, he also collaborates with importantcompanies both in Italy and abroad, includingZanotta, Alessi, Swatch, Philips, Venini, Bisazzaand Cartier. His objects are held in museumsacross the world, including the MoMA in NewYork, the Beaubourg in Paris, the Museumof Contemporary Art in Denver, and the VitraMuseum in Weil am Rhein.

Graziella Leyla Ciag She is a researcherin the eld of the History of Architecture andholds an untenured post as professor of Historyof the Arts, Design and Architecture at the MilanPolytechnics INDACO Department and Schoolof Design. She has authored texts on the historyof design and modern and contemporaryarchitecture, and curated exhibitions on thesame subjects, with particular attention tothe problems relating to the conservationand valorization of cultural heritage.


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Documents

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