Alessandro Mendini, 1987
"Sei Mobiletti", collection with Sinya Okayama

Sinya Okayama and I have designed “Sei mobiletti”, and now we are thinking of doing jewels and large urban sculptures too. All, only and completely in very shiny stainless steel, almost as if these objects were virtual, as if their existence were the fruit of what lies around them, the simple reflection of other things, lights, furniture, people... (arid it is the virtuosity of Daichi Co. that enables us to think along these lines...). The method used for designing together Is that of “reciprocal surprise”. So when we decided to do six small objects or pieces of furniture, we worked as follows: I in Milan drew half of each and, by means of a dotted line, left the other half indeterminate. I sent Sinya, in Osaka, the sketches of half a stool, half a vase, half a coffee-table, half a clothes-hanger, half a cupboard and half a lamp. He rendered them whole by drawing the other half of each item.
The surrealist painters played this game when they passed a painting on from one person to the next, hiding the already painted parts: each other painter having to add a bit. We had already experimented with a similar hypothesis in atelier Alchimia too, when, to make the many pieces of the “Mobile infinito”, we had the parts designed by as many different designers, each without the other’s knowledge. In this way the result remained in a state of suspense. But whilst in the case of the “Mobile infinito” the work was demonstrative of various literary asso……

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