Alessandro Mendini was born in Milan in 1931.
Architecture was not his childhood dream. He actually wanted to become a cartoonist or maybe a painter, however he obtained his degree in Architecture in 1959.
His first working experience is at the Studio Nizzoli Associati.
In 1970 he abandons architecture to dedicate himself to specialised journalism on architecture and design. He has been editor in chief of the magazine "Casabella" from 1970 to 1976 and in 1977 he founds "Modo", which he would lead until 1979. In the same year Gi� Ponti hands over to him the chief editing of "Domus". He has always considered himself a magazine's designer, regarding magazine to be a serial production work: "an industrial design object produced in thousands of copies".
Intense discussions and debates about design were taking place at the time. Even if Mendini did not design any product himself, he took part, sometimes as a founding member, to all the movements originated at that time. Such as "Global Tools" or "Radical Design", a school founded in 1973, which aims at taking back to design the most natural and spontaneous creativity. The members of this group used to meet in his "Casabella" editorial office.
In 1979 he was awarded the Compasso d'Oro prize for his theoretical activity.
In those years he also authored several books about his theories: Paesaggio Casalingo (1978), Addio Architettura (1981) and Progetto Infelice (1983).
At the end of the Seventies he went back to his designing activity in the field of furniture and objects. In an interview given to Rai Educational he says: "Being editor in chief of several magazines has been like a sort of divorce, a complete detachment, and that is a job I would no longer do. At a certain point I really wanted to design".�
Accordingly, in 1979 he joined the Alchimia Studio (founded in 1973 by Alessandro Guerriero), which designs objects for the sake of pure artistic pleasure, with connections to popular culture and kitsch, detached from industrial production and practical functionality. It's a challenge to rationality in order to follow an alchemy dream, to transform the poorest material into the highest valuable object.
Ettore Sottsass and Michele De Lucchi worked with him. In 1982 he was awarded, together with Alchimia, another Compasso d'Oro prize for his Research about decoration.
In the same years he also took part to the Bracciodiferro project.
He created objects, furniture, interiors, paintings, installations and architectures. In 1989 he opened, together with his brother Francesco, the Atelier Mendini in Milan.
Many studies about his work also in the Alchimia Studio have been published in several languages.
He is an honorary member of Bezabel Academy of Arts and Design of Jerusalem and Chevaler des Arts et des Lettres in France, and he holds an honorary title at the Architectural League of New York.
He was Design professor at the Hochschule fur Angewandte Kunst in Vienna and organised various exhibitions and seminars in Italy and abroad. His works are displayed in museums all around the world, in the permanent collection of the Gilmar Paper Company, in the M.O.M.A. (Museum of Modern Arts) in New York, in the archives of the University of Parma and in the Pompidou Center in Paris. In 1989 an important retrospective on his work has been displayed in Groninger, Holland.�
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