"One day I saw on a publication the 'living room of the century' by Alessandro Mendini's Studio Alchimia with the 'Proust' armchair and the 'Kandissi' sofa. I wanted to buy the pieces for my studio, but the designers didn't know where they had ended up. I eventually recovered them and, in a way, that was the reason why they became famous. The Proust armchair that was in my possession travelled so much for photo shoots for interior design magazines that, in the end, because of the requests they kept on getting, they put it into production," Italian fashion designer Cinzia Ruggeri told us a few years ago in an interview.
Mendini's Proust chair and sideboard from the '40s with decoratiosn inspired by Kandinsky were the pulsating heart of Ruggeri's atelier for many years as proved by a rare footage from 1988 showing a model walking around the showroom. They went well with her fashion creations, complementing them (when Mendini needed a dress for an installation he would often turn to Ruggeri).
You can bet Ruggeri, and many other genuine architecture and design fans, will miss Mendini, the architect, artist, designer, writer and theoretician who died yesterday at 87.
Born in Milan in 1931, Mendini dreamt as a young boy of becoming a cartoonist or a painter, but then switched his interests onto architecture. He graduated from the Politecnico di Milano in 1959 with a degree in architecture, then worked from 1956 to 1970 at the industrial design studio Nizzoli Associati.
In the early '70s Mendini co-founded the counter-design group and free school for individual creativity Global Tools and in the following years he directed different architecture and design magazines, including Casabella, Modo (founded by him) and Domus.
In 1979 Mendini joined the legendary Studio Alchimia, founded by Alessandro Guerriero. He developed experimental works and reinterpreted design classics, dubbed "banal design" to emphasise the way ordinary objects were revamped and radically transformed (the concept of "banal design" was presented through an installation by Mendini, Paola Navone, Daniela Puppa and Franco Raggi at the Venice Art Biennale in 1980).
In 1985 Mendini wrote The Alchimia Manifesto that remains a valid compendium of teachings for interior designers and for everybody else interested in the creative arts ("Alchimia believes in despecialisation," he wrote, anticipating the hybridisation trends of our modern times, "'confused' methods of creation and production can live side by side; crafts, industry, informatics, new and obsolete techniques and materials"), like his "Telegrams to the Designer" in one of them he stated: "There is no such thing as development but circularity between past present and future - they endlessly redesign themselves - the acceleration of information produces the phenomenon of instant antiques - the object of future is timeless").
Mendini then opened with his brother the Milan-based Atelier Mendini, a studio focused on creating objects, furniture, paintings, installations and architecture. He also created set designs and started collaborating with a wide range of design companies, including Alessi, Philips, Cartier, Swatch, Hermès, Venini, Zanotta and Bisazza (where he was appointed Art Director in 1996).
All his designs and projects were suspended between art, architecture and interior design: the 1978 Proust armchair combined a Baroque form with a hand-painted brightly vivid multi-coloured pattern that extended from the fabric to the carved wooden frame and that was inspired by pointillist artist Paul Signac.
As an architect, Mendini’s buildings include the Alessi residence in Omegna, Italy; the Teatrino della Bicchieraia in Arezzo; a memorial tower in Hiroshima, Japan; the Bruno Bianchi Swimming Centre in Trieste; the Milan Triennale foreign branch in Incheon, South Korea, the iconic Puppet Theatre in the Gardens of Milan's Triennale and the Groninger Museum in The Netherlands, a building characterised by a vibrant yellow tower. All of these buildings are characterised by bright colours that contribute to introduce a great degree of dynamism to the structures.
In 2011 the exhibition "Postmodernism" at London's V&A opened with the death of modernism and with footage of Alessandro Mendini's "Monumentino da Casa" (Household Monument, 1974), a chair on top of a flight of steps forming a ziggurat structure burning down in a deserted quarry near Genoa.
The event also featured his "Proust" chair and Mendini and Etro's designer suit (2001) covered in brand logos.
Last year Milan's Triennale celebrated Alessandro and his brother Francesco in the retrospective “Atelier Mendini. Le Architetture" (Atelier Mendini. The Architectures”), while the Groninger Museum had been working recently with him on an exhibition called "Mondo Mendini", due to open in October this year.
Mendini never loved long answers in his interviews, but always replied in a witty and brief way, his answers often sounding like gentle orders (when I asked him what kind of advice he would have liked to give to young people who wished to become architects/interior designers one day for an inerview for Dazed Digital, he just replied "Be Kind").
Mendini's essays and notes are still incredibly inspiring: in 1985 he wrote in "The Alchimia Manifesto" that the process of drawing has got to be conceived like a cycle, "everything that will be has already been," he stated, "and individual imagination, the basis for the world's survival, can travel in every way through all cultures and places so long as it works like one in love." Mendini did travel with his imagination, fantasy and love through cultures and colours, may he now rest in peace.
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