Mario Bellini

Mario BelliniDesigner Mario Bellini | Italy

Internationally renowned architect and designer, Mario Bellini was born in Milan in 1935. He graduated in Architecture at Milan Polytechnic.

8 times winner of the Compasso d’Oro, 25 of his works are featured in the permanent design collection of MoMA in New York.

He has designed countless art, design and architecture exhibitions over the years, both in Italy and abroad.

His collaboration with Olivetti is well known and his most famous projects include the first personal computer the P101, the Divisumma 18 and 28 calculators and the Praxis 35 and Praxis 45 typewriters.

A little anecdote revealed during a interview for a magazine bring to notice that Steve Jobs went to his studio in Milan twice to get him to work for Apple, but Bellini told him very honestly that he had a special relationship with Olivetti, to which he remained faithful.

After Olivetti, his activity as a designer continues with other Italian and international companies (B&B, Cassina, Heller, Flou, Yamaha, Renault, Rosenthal, Tecno, Kartell, Horm…)

Since the 1980’s Mario Bellini, dedicating himself almost entirely to architecture, has designed numerous kinds of buildings including the Portello Trade Fair district in Milan, the Villa Erba Exhibition and Convention Centre in Cernobbio (Como), the Tokyo Design Centre in Japan, the Natuzzi America Headquarters in the United States, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, the Deutsche Bank Headquarters in Frankfurt, the City History Museum of Bologna, the Department of Islamic Art at the Louvre in Paris, the new Milan Convention Centre – the largest in Europe – and in Rome-Fiumicino the new international Airterminal T3 has been completed, while the new Headquarters Generali Group in Trieste has just been inaugurated.

Projects currently underway are the New Polytechnic School of Genoa (2006-2020), a vast hotel and residential development on Virgin Gorda Island in the British Virgin Island (2018-2020).


Everything is the result of his sketches.

Bellini draws in a chiaroscuro way: “the ballpoint pen is cold”, he says, “but I like to use it quickly, almost obtaining engravings. What matters is the brain, the special flow that passes from the brain to the hand ”.