Cassina is proud of its enduring ability to balance traditional craftsmanship with technological advancement. The company—long considered the founding father of industrial design in Italy—began to implement serial production in the 1950s. Rather than creating a dichotomy between an artisanal approach and new industrial technologies, Cassina has always promoted a productive dialogue between the two. This synthesis has kept Cassina at the forefront of design throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.
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Iconic Product: The Superleggera Chair —
In 1957 designer Gio Ponti collaborated with Cassina to create the Superleggera Chair. Inspired by the traditional Chiavari chairs common among Italian beachgoers, Cassina's Superleggera is a simple, elegant design featuring pencil-thin shafts of joined ashwood and a cane seat. The piece’s extraordinary synthesis of lightness and strength made Superleggera an instant classic. Often imitated but never duplicated, Cassina's Superleggera has become the standard among multi-purpose chairs. Its light, clean, and classic look has inspired hundreds of contemporary designers. Today, Cassina offers the Superleggera in multiple incarnations—varied tints of different woods, in addition to leather and fabric upholstery in any one of Cassina’s 450 different colors.
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Iconic Designer: Le Corbusier —
The work of designer Charles-Edouard Jeanneret—more commonly known as Le Corbusier—has always been provocative. One of the first modern designers to embrace a functionalist aesthetic, Le Corbusier’s designs are clear in intention, aesthetically pure, and free of superfluous embellishment. Recognizing the enormous impact that Le Corbusier had and continues to have on contemporary design, in 1964 Cassina acquired the rights to “repropose” his furnishings. Presently, Cassina’s Le Corbusier collection is comprised of more than 15 original Le Corbusier designs, including the iconic LC1 Lounge Chair and LC4 Chaise.
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Cassina Maestri Collection —
Some years after Cassina acquired the rights to the work of Le Corbusier, the company initiated the Cassina Masters Collection. Inspired by the designs of the great innovators of twentieth century A&D, this line is dedicated to the proposition that modern design can and should endure. The Cassina Masters Collection includes work by some of the most recognizable designers in the industry—Gerrit Thomas Reitveld, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Charlotte Perriand. The Contemporary Masters Line encompasses new work by living designers, including Konstantin Grcic, Gaetano Pesce, Philippe Starck, and Jean-Marie Massaud.
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Cassina Contract Collection —
Perhaps not as well known as its residential line, Cassina’s contract division has nevertheless been around since the 50’s. The division cut its teeth while outfitting cruise liners—some 58 at last count. Products from the Cassina contract line can be found across the globe, in hundreds of hotels, bars, and restaurants. The contemporary collection of Cassina Contract is devoted to the interiors of boutiques, showrooms, and exclusive restaurants and hotels, including Milan’s Four Seasons, London’s Sanderson, and Philippe Starck’s Clift Hotel in San Francisco. Some of the contract divisions most renowned lines include Piero Lissoni’s TreunoTre and Gunnar Asplund’s Goteburg.
One need only take a quick look at Cassina’s historical timeline to get a sense of the company’s enormous impact on A&D. Designs from across the decade read like a compendium of the industry’s greatest hits: Gio Ponti’s Superleggera in the 50s; Le Corbusier’s LC4 in the 60s; Rietveld’s Red and Blue in the 70s; Gaetano Pesce’s Feltri in the 80s; Starck’s Lazy Working Sofa in the 90s; and Piero Lissoni’s Eve in 2009. These enduring designs are the proof in the pudding of Cassina’s driving philosophy: “synthesizing a striking inclination for research and the ability to spark multi-participant dialogues between the most talented designers of both the 20th and 21st centuries.”
