How the late and great architect Alessandro Mendini upended the boundaries between art and design
Italian maestro Alessandro Mendini upended notions of what design should be by indusing his work with playful personalities
When a great designer passes away, there is a sense of loss but also the feeling of rediscovery. That was certainly the case when Italian designer Alessandro Mendini died in February at the age of 87. Amidst the outpouring of remembrance was a recognition that Mendini’s architecture, furniture design and criticism—adventurous, playful, assertive and syncretic—did so much to shape how we see design today. Along with the Milan-based designers that followed him, Mendini helped shift design from a largely functional, utilitarian discipline to one that served as a vehicle for self-expression. Designers had always been artisans; under Mendini’s influence, they became something close to artists. Mendini saw his own legacy as that of “freeing design from the nightmare of functionalism and technicality, and in bringing design closer to the world of art,” he told the UK newspaper Metro in 2015. Even more than that, Mendini saw the act of designing as a kind of storytelling. “Our lives would be different without him,” wrote design critic Alice Rawsthorn in 2010, describing Mendini’s design as “humane, sensitive, thoughtful, empowering, intellectually rich discipline that’s about ideas, not styling”. It helped build the world of design as we know it today, she added, a world where designers “are concerned with cracking environmental problems and imbuing industrial pieces with meaning rather than flipping vertiginously expensive chairs at Sotheby’s or Christie’s.”
REDRAWING THE RULES
Mendini was born in Milan in 1931. He was fascinated by cartoons and animation as a child, and he loved to draw, but his parents pushed him towards what they saw as a more practical career in architecture. After graduating, Mendini worked for Marcello Nizzoli, an architect who had turned towards product design in Italy’s postwar boom years, when stylish espresso machines, cars and scooters caught the world’s imagination. More than products, though, Mendini was interested in ideas. When he became editor of Domus magazine in 1979, he used it as a platform to promote Postmodernism—a kind of wry, ironic rejection of the rationalist design that had dominated the middle part of the 20th century. The same attitude pervaded his own works, which were often silly, mischievous or downright over the top. He took classic Modernist pieces like Marcel Brueur’s Wassily chair and added unnecessary colours or quirks, critiquing what he saw as their design dogmatism. He drove the point home in his reinterpretation of Gerrit Reitveld’s Zig-zag chair, to which he added a cross-shaped back—a transgressive rejection of the holy rites of Modernism.
STEINTOR BUS STOPS (1992)
These black and yellow bus stop shelters, capped by golden turrets, became an instant landmark in the German city of Hanover. Their form evokes a medieval fortress that once stood on the site and their loud colour scheme offers a reprieve from the dour surroundings.
SERIOUS PLAY
That philosophy ran through Mendini’s wholly original works, like the Lassú chair, unveiled in 1974, which was perched atop a pyramid; a deliberately dysfunctional art piece that poked holes in the notion of perfection. In 1978, Mendini released the Proust armchair, an extravagantly frilly throne inspired by the baroque furniture of 18th century France and covered in hand-painted dots based on a Pointillist painting by Paul Signac. “It was obvious that Mendini was a mischievous, highly intelligent, and radical designer,” recalled designer Jasper Morrison, who first encountered his work as a student in 1979. While Morrison’s work does not bear much resemblance to Mendini’s, the influence is still clear in his attempts to make his furniture lively, warm and human. “All my objects are like characters,” Mendini once said. “One is good, another one is bad. It’s a kind of comedy and tragedy.” That was true even after his work took a more commercial turn, producing objects like corkscrews and moka pots for Alessi, each with its own playful personality.
Mendini also practiced architecture in collaboration with his younger brother Francesco; their first major project was the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands, which opened in 1994. Mendini designed a windowless yellow tower that stood at the centre of the complex, and he invited a different designer—philippe Starck, Michele de Lucchi and the architecture firm Coop Himmelb(l)au—to oversee each of the three wings that surrounded it. The resulting building is a mishmash of forms and colours, and yet it somehow works, confirming Mendini’s idea that design works best when ideas and influences are layer atop one another.
TORRE PARADISO (1988)
This shimmering cone (pictured above) was designed for Hiroshima in recognition of the centenary of its seaport. Mendini conceived it as a beacon of hope and prosperity for the city, which had managed to rebuild itself after being destroyed by one of the atomic bombs that ended World War II in 1945.
“MENDINI SAW HIS OWN LEGACY AS THAT OF FREEING DESIGN FROM THE NIGHTMARE OF FUNCTIONALISM AND TECHNICALITY, AND IN BRINGING DESIGN CLOSER TO THE WORLD OF ART”
CULTURAL PATCHWORK
Even after Postmodernism fell out of style, Mendini’s appeal remains undiminished. When South Korean developer Paradise Co and Japanese entertainment conglomerate Sega Sammy opened Paradise City last year, they partnered with Mendini to furnish the resort in Incheon, Korea. Among the various Mendini objects is an oversized Proust chair decorated in a traditional Korean jogakbo patchwork pattern. It was a cross-cultural match that seemed particularly well-suited to Mendini. “Jogakbo represents the Korean character the best in terms of material and pattern—and at the same time, it is modern because some of its aspects are similar to Cubism,” he said last year. After Mendini died, Paradise City hosted a memorial to the designer. “Mendini once said (to us) that he wanted to be remembered as ‘someone who wanted to deliver beauty to the world riddled with violence,’” says a spokesperson for the resort. “We will never forget the time we shared with Mendini.”