Mediated Messages by Véronique Patteeuw Léa-Catherine Szacka

Author:Véronique Patteeuw,Léa-Catherine Szacka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

Domus in Mendini’s postmodern trajectory

Between 1979 and 1985, during the heyday of international postmodernism, Domus was directed by Milan-based architect and designer Alessandro Mendini, who had built his outstanding career as an editor working for journals such as Casabella and Modo. Aware of the international reputation and reach that Domus had built over decades, the journal held a special role in Mendini’s agenda: that of operating as an international showcase for new ways of conceiving architectural and industrial design. Described by the journalist Barbara Radice as ‘a catalyst of situations and supplier of doubts and energies, a sophisticated intellectual,’3 Mendini was able to turn Domus into one of the most interesting crossroads in postmodern culture, bringing about a shift in national and international thinking.

Through Domus, Mendini introduced the hypothesis of the postmodern not as a trend but as a method of work to be applied to every design and architectural project. In so doing, he distanced himself – and with him his large group of collaborators – from a stylistic understanding of postmodern architecture, which was more typical of US and British architecture culture and received with reluctance by the majority of Italian architects. History was a central issue of the disciplinary discourse, but differently from the stylistic approach of the Americans, Mendini prized the experimentation of design methods that interpreted the historical material instead of re-proposing it formally. Mendini’s own method consisted in the use of history as a ‘store’ from which to pull out design inspirations ‘in a sensitive and not scientific way’.4 The path followed by Mendini was labyrinthine: an individual and romantic approach. While shaping a new Italian postmodern lifestyle, Mendini’s strategic use of Domus as both laboratory and megaphone contributed to reorient the architecture discourse towards the hedonistic, transgressive, narcissistic, excessive and formalist values of design and architecture emerging in post-industrial societies and opening it up to new formal possibilities and alignments. Yet more than this, as observed with admiration in the pages of The Architectural Review, Mendini had an active role in the making of European postmodern design, as Milan, from where he operated, was the world’s capital of industrial design, a place for cross-pollination of ideas and experimentation.5 Ultimately, he understood Domus as an extraordinary opportunity to successfully export the ‘made-in-Italy’ concept around the world – and Italian style with it. Domus promoted postmodern architecture, avoiding the celebration of its style and exalting its formal and structural strategies instead: the accumulation of signs, the eclectic assembly of forms, the crossing of different disciplinary boundaries and communication techniques. For Mendini, postmodern culture was inclusive of popular elements. For instance, Frank Gehry’s Santa Monica house was appreciated for the use of humble materials combined in unusual architectural solutions, whereas James Stirling’s Stuttgart Staatsgallerie was regarded as a masterpiece of assembly of different architectural elements. Mendini articulated a discourse based on understanding design culture as constituted of fragments, parts and details, devoting attention to the formalism of international architecture – American in particular – as well as to the new products of European industrial design.

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