Alex Chaise Longue by Alessandro Mendini for ecopixel
  The Exceptional

Alessandro Mendini was born in Milan in 1931. Through his work as an architect, designer, journalist, theorist, and publisher, Mendini helped establish the Italian design sensibility on a global scale—with a particular focus on neo-modern, avant-garde design, as well as the crossover between art, design, and architecture.

Mendini’s influential work spanned the arenas of graphics, furniture, interiors, architecture, stage design, writing, and painting. He graduated from the Politecnico in Milan in 1959, and he began his career at the studio of artist-designer Marcello Nizzoli. Mendini went on to become the publisher of the popular magazines Casabella (1970-76), Modo and Domus (each 1979-85). In 1979, he joined Ettore Sottsass and Michele De Lucchi as a partner at Studio Alchimia—a harbinger of the Memphis Group—before he cofounded Domus Academy in 1982. In 1989, he and his brother Francesco established their architectural practice, Atelier Mendini, in Milan, where he worked until his death in February 2019.

Some of Mendini’s most famed works include the Proust Chair for Cappellini (1978), a baroque form hand painted with a colorful, pointillist surface pattern, and the revitalization of the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands (1994), among others. He designed pieces for a variety of brands, including Alessi, Swatch, Philips, Swarovski, many of which have become contemporary design icons—such as his anthropomorphic Anna G. corkscrew (1994) for Alessi, which was inspired by fellow Italian designer and friend Anna Gili.

In recognition of his outstanding body of work, Mendini was awarded the Compasso d’Oro twice, in 1979 and 1981. He was also honored by the Architectural League of New York, made Chevalier des Arts et Lettres in France, and, in 2014, he was awarded the European Prize for Architecture. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, among others.

In 2019, Mendini passed away at the age of 87.

Ecopixel is an Italian design brand that was established by producer Claudio Milioto and designer Jan Puylaert in early 2017. Both partners have long been guided in their work by sustainable principles of reuse, recycling, and an intense respect for the environment. With their new joint venture, they are taking their goals of reducing waste and recycling plastic to a new level. Located in Porto Valtravaglia, near the Swiss border north of Milan, Ecopixel promotes a “never-ending recyclability concept”—meaning that each piece in Ecopixel’s collection of home furnishings, lighting, and accessories is both made from recycled material and is made to be 100% recyclable. The company's founders poetically describe this as an “in between moment of material solidification; what was and what will become.” The brand's aesthetic sits at the intersection between minimalistic geometry of form and postmodernist exuberance of materials.

Ecopixel began by recycling thermoplastic waste-material—so-called LDPE (low-density polyethylene industrial waste)—transforming off-cuts into richly textured blocks sorted into color families. Because each piece is created from a mixture of sorted LDPE remnants, it displays unique color and texture patterns, ranging from the vivacious 8-hue abstract pointillistic masterpiece that is Alessandro Mendini’s Alex Chaise Lounge for Ecopixel, to the marble-like, understated Delta 50 Stool in white and grey by Jan Puylaert for Ecopixel.

From there, Ecopixel branched out into creating new materials from other categories of plastic waste, including a fascinating collaboration with Belgian firm ECO-Oh!, which transforms 30% of garbage in Belgium into useful raw materials. Trashplast is the resulting collection of tableware, vases, and lighting in the slightly variegated deep grey experimental material, created from 100% recycled trash. Ecopixel’s mission is also educational; spreading the lesson that different plastic waste materials should never be mixed so as to keep the plastics pure, which facilitates reuse after each product life-cycle.

Ecopixel has already garnered a great deal of attention from industry heavyweights, as evidenced by the collaboration with Atelier Mendini. The Alex chaise lounge is now part of the permanent collection at the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands. Additionally, the brand has showcased its collection at the Milan Design Week, Homi Milano lifestyle fair, Hotel nhow Milano, Dubai Design Week, as well as debuting Trashplast at Ventura Future in Milan in 2018.