Eighty years of human life doesn’t seem especially noteworthy nowadays but for a furniture brand it is a mighty achievement. Over the past eight decades there have been dramatic changes in the way we live, each bringing new developments in the kind of furniture we want and what it is possible to make. So for Cassina, which has weathered social and technological change to reach its 80th birthday, celebration is definitely in order.
But those visiting its showroom at the Salone del Mobile this year would have been forgiven for thinking they had stumbled into an upmarket warehouse, not one of Italy’s longest serving design brands in the throes of celebration. Designer Piero Lissoni’s installation “Men at Work” saw palettes, forklift trucks and mesh strewn about as a backdrop to the new collection. It wasn’t just artistic gimmickry; the aim was to show the importance of the workshop in Cassina’s history.
Located in Meda, north of Milan, the workshop has seen the creation of hundreds of experimental designs over the years, many of which never made it to the production line. Their value hasn’t been in units shifted but as a study in what can be achieved, an exploration of how furniture can respond to our ever-evolving domestic arrangements.
In Milan at the Triennale, the exhibition Made in Cassina is showcasing how such experimentation has kept the brand alive. The effect of the more than 100 designs on display is rather like walking around a lab containing vaguely familiar anatomical objects; the body parts, in this case, being extraordinary models and sketches that have helped inspire countless subsequent collections.
This ethos of experimentation is why the workshop is so central to the brand, a legacy started by brothers and master carpenters Cesare and Umberto Cassina in 1927. It explains the existence of such groundbreaking designs as Gio Ponti’s 1957 Superleggera chair, which took seven years to develop and achieved the perfect balance between solidity and weightlessness.
Ponti wrote of his delight at watching the Cassina workmen throw the chairs into the air and seeing them land without breaking, a feat of design as well as proof of how closely the designer worked with the workshop craftsmen.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Cassina experimented further with new materials and more radical processes, of which Gaetano Pesce was perhaps the greatest proponent. The 1980 Dalila chairs and Sansone tables explored how manufactured furniture could still be unique. Pesce designed products that required craftsmen in the workshop to determine the varying colour and form of each piece so that, in his own words, he turned “craftsmen into inventors”.
The 1990s up to the present day has been a period notable for designs that explore particular solutions for 21st-century living. Philippe Starck has been at the forefront, reimagining the concept of seating with designs such as his 2002 Music Image Sofa System, which incorporates a sound system into a seating unit. Such work proves that Cassina isn’t ready to rest on its laurels but continues to push the boundaries of creativity and capability. “To work with Cassina,” says Starck. “Is the same as when I work at my oyster farm, with my feet in the mud and head in the stars. With Cassina we have our heads in the stars to consider the most advanced, creative and crazy projects but we have our feet on the ground to produce these ideas with the utmost technology and quality.”
‘Made in Cassina’, until September 7, Triennale Design Museum, Milan
Extracted from the August edition of Wallpaper* magazine
