Rooms as worlds: Mendini’s universe comes to life on Lake Maggiore

Inside the rooms of Villa Giulia, overlooking Lake Maggiore from one of the most panoramic spots in Verbania, the exhibition Alessandro Mendini. Cose. Stanze come mondi creates an intimate and carefully orchestrated journey into the creative universe of Alessandro Mendini. Curated by Loredana Parmesani and organized by the Municipality of Verbania in collaboration with the Archivio Alessandro Mendini, through Elisa and Fulvia Mendini, the exhibition brings together 130 works among the most iconic of his production, spanning a chronological arc from the Milanese Radical Design movement of the 1970s to his postmodern reflections and collaborations with Alessi, historically connected to the Verbano Cusio Ossola area.


Alessandro Mendini. Cose. Stanze come mondi, Verbania, Villa Giulia, 2026

The exhibition design engages directly with the historic architecture of the villa, built by Giuseppe Branca and dedicated to his wife Giulia, completed in 1884 as an extension of an earlier residence commissioned in 1848 by Bernardino Branca, inventor of Fernet. The intimate and domestic character of the interiors becomes the key to the exhibition itself: each room is conceived as an autonomous world, shaped around a single iconic object from the Mendini archive, selected together with his daughters Fulvia and Elisa.


Alessandro Mendini. Cose. Stanze come mondi, Verbania, Villa Giulia, 2026

From this premise unfolds an emotional and design-driven narrative in which every work generates its own atmosphere. The Poltrona di Paglia (1974) opens a reflection on design as provocation and social activism, moving beyond the mere function of the useful object. The celebrated Poltrona di Proust (1978), suspended between Rococo references and Pointillism, reveals the most visionary and theatrical side of Mendini’s research. The K2 sofa (2013) pays tribute to the artists and movements that nourished his imagination — from Giorgio de Chirico to Alberto Savinio, from Carlo Carrà to Futurism and the historical avant-gardes — while the Mendinigrafo (1985) transforms his universe of signs, patterns, and decorations into a drawing instrument, encapsulating the visual language that made his work instantly recognizable.


Alessandro Mendini. Cose. Stanze come mondi, Verbania, Villa Giulia, 2026

The exhibition continues with 100% Make Up by Alessi, a collection of one hundred porcelain vases designed by Mendini and decorated by international artists, designers, and architects, alongside Mobili per Uomo: Giacca (1997), a monumental mosaic-and-gold-leaf cabinet-sculpture that transforms a garment into domestic architecture. Each section is accompanied by drawings, paintings, photographs, writings, and objects that reveal the genesis of the works, highlighting not only the stylistic evolution of the designer but also the theoretical dimension of his practice.


Alessandro Mendini. Cose. Stanze come mondi, Verbania, Villa Giulia, 2026

It is precisely this construction through environments that makes the exhibition particularly immersive: rather than a traditional retrospective, Alessandro Mendini. Cose. Stanze come mondi unfolds as a sequence of emotional and mental spaces, where visitors encounter the most personal side of Mendini. The intentionally restrained selection of works contributes to creating an intimate, almost domestic experience, reflecting the very idea of the room so central to the designer’s thinking: a place of stillness and reflection, but also of restlessness and imagination.


Alessandro Mendini. Cose. Stanze come mondi, Verbania, Villa Giulia, 2026

Within this constant interplay between irony, decoration, memory, and experimentation emerges the most playful dimension of Mendini’s poetics. Colors, forms, artistic references, and contaminations transform objects into narrative presences, suspended between art and design, function and fantasy. It is an approach that made Mendini’s work unique on the international stage, and that the exhibition conveys through a journey of details, visions, and unexpected creative short circuits.