Archinect - News

What ever happened to pleasurable design? Looking back on Alessandro Mendini's career

2019-03-01T18:06:00-05:00

Exuberant design was [Alessandro] Mendini’s specialty. Mendini died last week, age 87, and his death leaves a void in the school of thought that favored emotion and surprise over the cold efficiency that has come to dominate much of design, calibrated as it is to the precise and bottomless needs of the technology industry.

Trained as an architect with a passion for design, Alessandro Mendini (1931-2019) will be remembered as an advocate for the function of pleasure in design. Mendini and other Italian architects and designers championed a vibrant postmodernism throughout the second half of the 20th century, but Mendini's work was uniquely pervasive in the modern design world.

Anna, designed by Alessandro Medini

Medini's Anna corkscrew (above) was one of the most popular items in the Alessi lineup when it was designed in 1994. Of the design, Fast Company's Suzanne Labarre wrote that "as you stab the screw into a cork and twist, Anna’s arms rise up over her head in a silent hallelujah to the wine-fueled revelry that awaits. Today you can buy all manner of wine openers: electric ones, air pressure pumps, one-handed varieties. But how many corkscrews can make you laugh out loud?"

Medini's name was said in the same sentences as those including Michael Graves and Ettore Sottsass among aesthetes in the 80s...

The extra-architectural ventures of Zaha Hadid

2016-03-31T20:46:00-04:00

Zaha Hadid will rightfully go down in history for the tremendous mark she made on architecture. But buildings weren't the only things she designed.

In fact, for the majority of her career, she worked at smaller scales, whether with painting, furniture design, or some other venture. One of her first realized projects, from 1985, consisted entirely of furniture, shelves, and other additions to a pre-existing International Style home in London at 24 Cathcart Road.

Her interest in the expanded field of design, including interiors and the objects that fill them, continued throughout her career. For some, this work indicates a crass and unapologetic commercialism. Philip Kennicott, for example, wrote for the Washington Post earlier today, "She spoke the airy language of architectural theory, with all its utopian overtones, but she vigorously branded consumer products from candles to tableware to neckties."

ln any case, her influence exceeds architecture – extending to the runway, the showroo...

Toyo Ito’s Flatware for Alessi

2013-01-23T20:05:00-05:00

Mr. Ito, the Japanese architect whose team won a Golden Lion Award at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale for its concepts for new housing after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, recently designed flatware called Mu. Introduced in Paris by the Italian company Alessi, the pattern complements Ku, the delicate porcelain service Mr. Ito created for Alessi in 2006.