​Alessandro Mendini was born in Milan in 1931. He graduated from Politecnico of Milano in 1959 with a degree in architecture and worked as a designer, architect and artist.

He was editor-in-chief of various design magazines such as Casabella and Domus and even founded Modo in 1977 and Ollo in 1988.

In the 1970s he became one of the main personalities of the Radical design movement, and later one of the founding members of the "Global Tools" collective, set up in 1973. In 1979 he joined the Studio Alchimia as a partner and worked together with ​Ettore Sottsass and Michele De Lucchi. In 1982 he co-founded Domus Academy, a private postgraduate design school in Milan.

In his career as an architect, he designed several buildings, among which the Alessi residence in Omegna, Italy; the theater complex "Teatrino della Bicchieraia" in Arezzo, Tuscany; a memorial tower in Hiroshima, Japan; the Groninger Museum in The Netherlands and the Arosa Casino in Switzerland.

​In 1979, 1981 and 2014 he was awarded the Compasso d’Oro award. In France he was nominated Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, he is the recipient of an honorary title from the Architectural League of New York and was also awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the Politecnico di Milano where he studied.

In 1989, together with his brother Francesco Mendini, he opened Atelier Mendini which received a Gold Medal for Italian architecture in 2003 from Triennale di Milano for their plan for the metro in Naples and the 2006 Villegiature Awards in Paris for the Byblos Art Hotel in Verona.