The Cassina Brand

Venice, Rome, Milan, Verona ... when the country itself is a work of art, creating a furniture that does not meet such high standards is almost criminal! Italian brands understand this truth like no other, so interiors of local factories will do honor not only in your house but to any museum of contemporary art. Despite that, the post-war years were very difficult for the Italian furniture industry. The factories mainly produced interior items of the classical style, which were of little interest to the public. In addition, the Scandinavian design began to gain the popularity, which led to an increase in imports, a decrease in exports, and in general to decadent moods. But the Italians are not able to do anything bad for a long time - they were open to the new experiments, they risked and created a new aesthetics.

Cassina is one of those standing out brands. It is the legendary brand in the field of high-quality Italian furniture, and one of the ten top brands of the design furniture in the world that has declared its uniqueness and an excellent quality from the very first beginning.

The brand Cassina embodies the history of classical furniture, the pillars of which are the world’s the most famous names, such as Gaetano Pesce, Achille Castiglioni, Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Frank Lloyd Wright. Furniture of the twentieth century of this factory has become an icon of style and is produced in limited editions for the elite.
Actual, elegant and nontrivial. With Cassina's furniture, you can not see the banality! Each piece of furniture resembles a multifunctional contemporary work of art. The production of the factory combines the dynamics of lines, lightness, and versatility. The furniture is comfortable and practical, it does not just fit into the interior, but flirts with it, revealing new shades of the familiar to the last centimeter of the room.

If you do not know the stereotypes then let me tell you that the concept of "Italy's best furniture”- does not end with a label “made in Italy”. Therefore elucidating the impression of that - in the catalog of the Cassina company you will definitely find something for yourself, your home and personal inspirations.

The brand's path to the furniture design world began just like hundreds and thousands of other histories before and after them. In 1927, the brothers Cesare and Umberto Cassina founded the company called “Amedeo Cassina” in the city of Meda in the Monza-e-Brianza province. It started its journey as an unremarkable joiner's shop specialized in wooden furniture - good quality, high-quality, but not very interesting. It had nothing special about it. Everything radically changed in the postwar years: the company began to cooperate with the most brilliant, eminent and the best of the best designers and architects of that time.

Franco Cassina continued the work of the founders of the company but made some alterations and changes to the basic concept of the company by relying on his own ideas. It seemed incredibly boring to produce traditional home furniture, which it was not distinguished by a special variety of styles and forms than the other furniture of that time. Therefore, he decided to modernize not only the production but in addition to this - rethink the attitude towards the design of furniture in general. Young and ambitious head of the Casinna believed that the future of the furniture industry lies on the original and non-standard designs, and it will bring a special flavor to the interior of any building.

After the Second World War, the company developed by leaps and bounds. Focusing on the unique design and high-quality products - Franco Cassina was not wrong or mistaken, as if he had abilities to foresee the future. Cassina products eventually received the worldwide recognition.

Cassina had started to cooperate with designers that were inspired by the innovative approach of the owners. They have used exclusively the high-quality materials; such as - high-quality wood, natural leather, and genuine stones. The company itself and its owners always have supported and worked hand to hand with the Italian design majesties and patriarchs. The company always supported and had this amazing “triple unity” dialogue through research, creation, and improvement of new methods of the mass production, and innovative design of the highest level with those designers and architects. One of the first of the firsts was Franco Albini. In 1948, he designed the Cassina chair mod.430. Their strict, simple and natural forms looked really fresh and technologically new. With this exact name begins the list of eminent masters in the field of furniture design with which the factory was lucky to work. At that time, such designers as Philippe Starck, Piero Lissoni, Alessandro Mendini, Gio Ponti, Vico Magistretti, Ico Parisi and many other talented craftsmen collaborated with the company.

A separate story is the collection of masters and founders of the modern design school iMaestri. In one brand you can see that the brightest ideas of creative people of the XIX and XX century are united: Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Charlotte Perriand, Erik Gunnar Asplund - these are not even the half of the names that worked with the legendary furniture brand. Cassina managed to give the world unique items of the Italian furniture, which became a symbol of creative search and innovative solutions, and that is in addition to it is bold and original. Since then, Cassina has been expanding production, starting to produce furniture for airliners, hotels and many more of other public spaces, but most importantly, it is moving towards innovation and is moving in the same direction as Italian and world design.

The Cassina world reflects the path of an intuitive and forward-looking company, which first opened the era of industrial design in Italy in the 1950s, marking the transition from craft production to serial production. A company that has always been able to anticipate the times with a pioneering attitude, coming to involve the most renowned designers and architects in the creation of new forms that tell the many inspirations and influences of contemporary design. Research, manual knowledge, and technological development meet in the various proposals dedicated to the home and furnishing of large-scale architectural spaces, embracing a philosophy of passion and perfection that reveals all its excellence in the creation of design furniture characterized by comfortable, essential, flexible and surprisingly innovative lines. In a continuous comparison between past, present, and future, the company presents to the world the great classics of the greatest architects of the twentieth century, re-editing the icons of modernity in the collections I Maestri and LC Collection, founded on the accuracy and respect of projects initials. The expressions that have contributed to the evolution of design from the 50s to today come to life in the I Contemporanei collection, in which the iconic models of Made in Italy discover new interpretations and variations within different habitats. Finally, Cassina's experimental approach emerges, with significant planning, in the Simon Collection, composed of the most emblematic objects of the relationship between culture and industry in Italian design.

The Cassina furniture innovations reflect the continuous evolution of the Made in Meda offer and are presented every year at the IMM international fair in Cologne and at the Milan Furniture Fair, in warm and enveloping environments in line with the image and the atmospheres of single-brand stores. The new products underline the contemporary philosophy and the sense of anticipation of a company that always looks ahead respecting its origins, the authenticity of the projects and the relationship with the architecture, building a constant dialogue between past, present, and future. Design containers, chairs, armchairs and sofasCassina make up elegant and versatile furnishing systems, which in addition to enriching and updating the iconic pieces of the LC Collection and the I Maestri collection, include the modernist forms of Simon Collection and the extraordinary expressions of the I Contemporanei collection. The signatures of the major exponents of international design and architecture include, among others, Patricia Urquiola - artistic director of Cassina -, Piero Lissoni, Philippe Starck, Patrick Norguet, Jaime Hayon, Patrick Jouin, Rowan and Erwan Bouroullec and Konstantin Grcic. It is a unique and diversified sequence that underlines the fundamental balance between comfort, aesthetics, and function, as well as the indissoluble interweaving between artisan tradition and technological progress. Design furniture that stands out and lives in the environment both individually and through easy combinations based on different decorative tastes and lifestyles in constant evolution.

The co-authors

It was in 1922 that Le Corbusier opened his architectural practice in the rue de Sèvres, collaborating with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret. The deep understanding between the two leads them to conduct numerous research, projects, and achievements together. In October 1927, they decided to make use of the contribution of Charlotte Perriand, a young architect who at that time already enjoyed a certain notoriety. Their association will last until 1937 and will prove extremely fruitful, especially as regards the realization of innovative projects, which will result in real successes in the business plan. Still, for the productive contribution promoted by Cassina, an interest persists both in the conceptual sphere and in the quality conquered and there is an ever-increasing expectation on each object foreseen by the collection.

Le Corbusier (1887 - 1955) Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, was born in La Chaux-de Fonds, Switzerland, in 1887, and died in France, in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, in 1965. Considered the man of the century for his idea of dwelling, between traditional and innovative interiors, and for it's famous, multifaceted and diversified architectural production, Le Corbusier is an undisputed reference point for the international design culture. Its purpose is to seek aesthetic values starting from the new materials made available by the industry. The Master accepts the challenge and applies the rationalism of architecture to furnishing. An original and sustainable thought, able to govern the effects of modernity. His work, in the early times, hampered by his alleged "revolution" and by the radicalism born of the "purist" experiences, with the maturation of the times has had and continues to have the right recognition. In his work as an urban planner, architect, and designer, his method of research, in a continuous process of evolution, sometimes touches even the opposite extremes of a conspicuous plastic language. Evidence of this is the residence unit of Marseilles (1946-52), the Chapel of Notre-Dame du Haut in Ronchamp (1950-55), the Convent of the Dominicans "La Tourette" in Eveux (1951-56), the Pavillon de the Homme in Zurich (1964-65), the project for the Venice Hospital (1965).
The same commitment is found in the design of the numerous furnishings, such as the furniture of the Equipment intérieur de la Maison (tables, chairs, armchairs, sofas) designed for the 1928 Salon d'Automne, together with Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand and Cashiers Standard ", a system of container furniture designed for the Esprit Nouveau Pavilion of 1925, in collaboration with Pierre Jeanneret. Since the '50s, Le Corbusier has focused his research on wood, a material that, after years of experimentation with the metal tubular, used above all in artistic maturity in a newfound proximity to nature, directing production towards elementary and archetypal objects.

Jeanneret (1886 - 1967) A graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Geneva, Pierre Jeanneret was an architect, designer, and urban planner. His name and his work are inextricably linked to that of the famous cousin Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, called Le Corbusier, of which he was a partner from 1922 to 1940. He co-signed most of the projects and achievements prior to World War II, among which Villa La Roche in Paris, which is currently the headquarters of the Foundation Le Corbusier, and the famous furnishings "Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Charlotte Perriand". At the beginning of the 1950s, at the request of Le Corbusier, he moved to India to build the new capital of Pendjab, Chandigarh and became project leader until 1966. Chandigarh became one of the main references of modern architecture and urbanism. If the celebrity of Chandigarh bears the imprint of Le Corbusier, the qualities of this capital are to be attributed both to the genius of the latter and to that of Pierre Jeanneret.

Perriand (1903 - 1999) Charlotte Perriand is a full member of that cultural vanguard that since the early decades of the twentieth century has promoted a profound renewal of aesthetic values, and has given rise to a truly modern sensibility of everyday life. In this context, his specific contribution focuses on the spaces of interior architecture, which are conceived as the engine of a new way of living, which is still at the center of the contemporary lifestyle. In the field of the history of twentieth-century furniture, the advent of modernity is made possible by the intriguing audacity of this true reformer of interior architecture. At the beginning of his career, he was critically acclaimed for his Bar under the roof, exhibited at the 1927 Salon d'Automne, entirely built in nickel-plated copper and anodized aluminum. The same year, just twenty-four years, he began a ten-year collaboration with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, at the famous atelier of 35, rue de Sèvres in Paris. His presence in the atelier of Le Corbusier is visible in all the furnishings designed with these and Pierre Jeanneret: Charlotte Perriand becomes a cornerstone of the renovation project promoted by the architect, adding, in particular, a dimension of humanity to the sometimes cold rationalism of Le Corbusier. In his projects he manages to animate the fundamental objects of everyday life with new aesthetic values: in particular, his talent and intuition in the discovery and use of new materials come to manifest themselves in all their extension.

The ten-year collaboration with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret and the Japanese experience represent moments of intense creative effervescence in the artist's life. During his long stay in the Far East ('40 -'46), he can fully reveal his talent as an artist, through a reinterpretation of the reality of living that resonates tradition and modernity: as an example we can mention the furnishings produced with the ancient bamboo working techniques, able to enhance the new shapes already experimented with steel tubes. Afterward, his professional activity focuses on a series of original and balanced productions, commissioned by first-rate entities and companies, the likes of Air France, as well as by several foreign institutions, reflecting a reputation that has now acquired a dimension international.

The figure that characterizes the personality of Charlotte Perriand is an honest loyalty to the principles of a human and innovative rationalism, which has been able to keep intact in his works, which he has worked with passion, even in the perspective of their re-edition in the series "Cassina Teachers”.

Cassina, today part of the Poltrona Frau Group, is one of the oldest companies in Italian design, with a history and very special designers who place it among the most interesting companies for research, quality, and rigor. It all started in Meda, in Brianza, in 1927 with the brothers Cesare and Umberto Cassina. But we must wait for the great crisis to pass, and then the war, for the leap in scale and quality. The opportunity to move from the laboratory to the industry arrives with the commissions for the first large cruise ships. For the transatlantic Andrea Doria, (1953), the company produces 500 pieces and creates magnificent environments, the reading room of the first class, the library, the dining room. It is in the work for the ships that Cassina meet Gio Ponti, the architect who will mark the turning point of the company. His first chair, 646, or the Light, It is produced in thousands of pieces for restaurants and public spaces. The product is a success. Turnovers rise. But Ponti is still not satisfied and Cassina put the best craftsmen on the square at his disposal. Ponti works on the chair by lightening the structure up to realize the legendary Superleggera. It weighs 1.66 kg. And what's more, it's indestructible. The year was 1957.

Since then, the ascent of Cassina is a well-known story that reaches the present day, with contemporary designers such as Mario Bellini, Andrea Branzi, Achille Castiglioni, Paolo Deganello, Rodolfo Dordoni, Vico Magistretti, Alessandro Mendini, Massimo Morozzi, Afra and Tobia Scarpa, Ettore Sottsass, to which are added more trades: Philippe Starck, Piero Lissoni, Hannes Wettstein, Jorge Pensi, Jehs + Laub, Patrick Jouin and Jean Marie Massaud, While the name of Cassina is also distinguished by a philological work of rediscovery and production of pieces of historical masters from Le Corbusier to Gerrit T. from Rietveld to Frank Lloyd Wright, to the Italian Franco Albini. The challenge today is to maintain quality and specificity in a period of difficult, highly competitive markets even outside Europe. What is the point of this company closing the 2009 financial statements with 101.240 million euros in revenues, a decrease of 14% compared to 2008, mainly due to the crisis in the US and South America markets, while it held on the markets of Asia and Oceania and has grown by 18% in Japan? The watchword of Gianluca Armento, Cassina's brand director, it is authenticity that refers first of all to the protection of the company's identity, marked by design projects and ambitious products that have entered the empyrean of the history of design: "In this crisis year we took the opportunity to take stock of the situation to understand the strengths and weaknesses. Our strength is authenticity ».

Armento explains: «Cassina has outlined a new model of industry, capable of keeping together very different personalities, from Gaetano Pesce to Piero Lissoni, to give an example, and to bring them back to the same project logic, from which objects belonging to in the same order. An order that derives from the search for quality, from precise checks on materials, techniques, and performances, from the search for quality, up to invent new types of furniture that affect the behaviors and lifestyles of the contemporary ". For Piero Lissoni, Cassina is a dream, it is the rigor of design. What's left of the old Ponti company? "Everything remains - explains Lissoni - the research spirit remains from the project to every detail, there is an amazing research, both in the contemporary area and in the historical one, it is a clear, precise brand with an unmistakable line». Lissoni has just returned to the city of Milan the "National Theater" after a major redevelopment intervention, while his latest project is being delivered to the Arlov Hotel in Jerusalem. "Now that access to research is open to everyone, the difference lies in the choice; then a line is born, an identity, an alphabet, which in this case is declined in a high level of the market “
Cesare Cassina's flash of genius had it at the beginning of the 1920s: craftsmanship had to take into account new types of objects and furnishings for the emerging social classes that were being created. Under the banner "Amedeo Cassina" the company goes through the world war, is strengthened during the reconstruction up to mark the sunset of traditional furniture and the beginning of the race that has made it the symbol of design made in Italy.

The exhibition made in Cassina ( card ) tells all this. "It is rare for a company to keep all the original pieces, especially when they are as cumbersome as couches - the exhibition curator Giampiero Bosoni ( interview ) -. So I can tell you a piece of history ». An exhibition, but also a journey inside the company and Italian design. Two paths that travel on two parallel roads that often cross and overlap.

At the end of the 1940s, Cassina opened up to collaborations with designers outside the company: the separation of design from production marks the gradual transition from the artisan to the industrial dimension, and the initiation of formal research and experiments on materials fuse a traditional soul with innovation and provocation to intuit the classics of tomorrow. Thanks to the foresight of the Cassina brothers, it developed to become a major company, making use of the collaboration of the most prestigious exponents of architecture and design, from Gio Ponti and Franco Albini to Mangiarotti, Scarpa, Mario Bellini ( interview ), Vico Magistretti.

Always looking to the future but mindful of the importance of the past, Cassina in 1965 re-edited a series of furniture signed by the great designers of the twentieth century in the collection "The Masters" that returns form and life to timeless works of the Modern Movement. This is how the furnishings of Le Corbusier, the Chaise-longue, the Red and Blue (1918), the works of Frank Lloyd Wright, Mackintosh, Gunnar Asplund are reproduced.

The pieces on display, created to last over time, do not submit to fashion: the Zig Zag by Rietveld, the Felts by Gaetano Pesce, Il Buco and the Cabby Bellini, the Superleggera by Ponti and the Privè by Starck underline the highlights, the events, the emotions and the tendencies of a long period of time in the history of our design.