Mendini (born in Milan 1931) is the last ‘master’, still working full-time, of an unsurpassed generation of Italian design.
Editor of several magazines (Casabella, Domus, Ollo, Modo), founder of various groups (from Radicals to Alchimia), Alessandro Mendini- who, since 2000 has been a partner with his brother Francesco in the Mendini studio in Milan-has had an enormous influence through his works and his words on the aesthetic trends of international design, so that it has become a formidable expressive tool of the state of mind of modern Man, which swings to and fro between joy and discomfort.
The book sets out to identify 9 themes (or ‘rules’, as Mendini calls them) to allow the reader to follow, in a series of free associations, the many implications of his work and its repercussions on the contemporary world of design. It is neither a catalog nor an anthology, but rather the reconstruction on paper of an intellectual journey which, using lucidity, despair, optimism and a smattering of madness, takes us into the contradictions of our era.
On account of its inclusive and across-the-board character, the Mendini Code aims to be the collected works and, at the same time, a commentated biography by last “master” of Italian creativeness.