Alessandro Mendini
“… I like irony, I like to play, I like to keep very far away from rhetoric and so I make sure my objects express this, in a certain sense turning into adult toys that however, have a mystique, a sense of rituality, a consciousness of use and gestures of everyday life.” These words well describe Alessandro Mendini’s approach, his refusal of extreme simplification of functions, of the typological tradition derived from it. Graduated in Architecture from Politecnico di Milano in 1959, partner at Studio Nizzoli e Associati in 1966, between 1970 and 1976 he was director of Casabella magazine. He founded Global Tools in 1972 and is a member of Archizoom associates and Superstudio. Director of Modo magazine, for which he received the Compasso d’Oro in 1979. Between 1978 and 1979 he designed the Proust armchair and Kandissi sofa, examples of his re-design. Director of Domus from 1980 to 1985. He designed the Macaone table for Zanotta in 1987. In 1989 in the Netherlands, his solo exhibition was installed at the Groninger Museum. That same year he opened Atelier Mendini in Milan, along with his brother, dealing with architecture, painting and sculpture.
“My every intellectual and cultural action is based on my existence, it is sentimental. My design method is very personal, with the difficulties of focusing on the typical values of moods that occur over time. A method of work based on paradox, metaphor, excess, displacement, the grotesque.” It is clear that the Milo lamp of 1988, in its morphological dictate, was created outside of any sanctioned frame of reference, closer to the object itself, fascinating. From the truncated cone base a cylinder ascends vertically that contains a second as a platform. Below the glass globe located at the top, a ring supports the mask which partially reduces the luminous and illuminating effect. Codiceicona, in 2020 reissued the 1988 Milo lamp, respecting the aesthetic form, with particular attention to the search for original colours and updating the technology.
