Architect, designer, painter and architectural and design theorist, he was born in Milan in 1931. He gained international renown in the 1960s and is associated with the theoretical basis of postmodern design and the concepts of banal design (design that uses the banal as a linguistic code and "allows for quotation, incongruity, inauthenticity and incompleteness") and redesign ("decorative interventions on rediscovered objects or famous design products").

He began his career as a member of the Nizzoli studio (1960-70) and then combined this activity with a strong theoretical and critical commitment. Mandini was a protagonist of many of the most important cultural events of the 20th century, contributing theoretically to current phenomena and creating new schools of thought.