architect profile

CASSINA HISTORY BEGINNING, THE FIFTIES The "Amedeo Cassina" firm first saw the light of day officially at Meda (Milano) in 1927, on the initiative of the brothers Cesare and Umberto Cassina. The name was modified in 1935 to "Figli di Amedeo Cassina". At the outset practically the entire outputs was made up of small pieces of wooden furniture small work-tables and living-room tables - being later extended to include armchairs and drawingroom furniture. The first Cassina furniture was eclectic in inspiration, but the melange of styles soon gave way to the generic middle-of-the-road 20th century style. These were years of great crisis and it was thanks to this amplification of activity that the young firm was able to keep its head above water and not succumb to the difficulties that beset the sector and the economy of the entire state. The furniture that Cassina produced was for the most part fitted; it was often made for specific destinations and sometimes resulted in small serial production runs. CASSINA AND THE BIRTH OF ITALIAN DESIGN After the war, Cassina continued to expand in size, fame and above all in excellence, thanks to the acknowledged quality of the products, which by this time covered the whole furniture range; chairs, armchairs, tables, smaller chairs, sofas and beds. Years followed on rich in experience and result, marked by the beginning of the firm's collaboration with external designers, bringing with them a wide range of research values. The first was the architect Franco Albini whose little mod.430 armchairs (1948), rigorous and essential in their lines of construction, went against current trends and showed an attention and commitment towards a compositional research aimed more at innovation. The conviction was rooted that numbers and organisation were not in themselves sufficient, and that it is quality that represents he best guarantee of a product's success and long life. Italian design was in the process of being born, and Cassina was among the architects of the phenomenon.

Separation of the procedures of design and production was for the firm the sign of passage from its initial crafts vocation to the industrial. Cassina was for research and experiment, but primed with the crafts tradition of which it is a master. The transformation was nourished by a large number of commissions for ship fittings-out, which - together with furniture for hotels and restaurants and other places created for the accommodation of guests - accounted for the greater part of the firm's activity right up to the mid-sixties and beyond. SHIP FURNISHINGS One of the first ships that Cassina had a hand in fitting out was the Anna C. (1947), the first passenger ship of the Costa line (and the commission went on for the furniture and fittings of successive ships of the Costa line). In those years, Italy was busy reconstructing its own transatlantic fleet. Gio Ponti and Nino Zoncada, both mindful of the lessons of Gustavo Pulitzer, were among the more active designers engaged in creating the furnishings of these new ships. For the ill-fated turbo-craft Andrea Doria (1952), built at Genova Sestri in the Ansaldo shipyard, Zoncada and Ponti designed the furniture of the saloon, the ballroom, the great bar and the winter garden of the first class, furniture that was supplied by Cassina. There followed furnishings for the Michelangelo (1065), Cristoforo Colombo and Gripsholm. The armchairs made for these schemes were particular in their constructional details, such as the bulk of their structure, the splay of the legs and the rigid upholstery in strict keeping with their use and to the stresses that they had to withstand. FURNITURE FOR PUBLIC PLACES Cassina's activity in the sector of complete furnishing schemes and interiors for public premises, events or special exhibitions took on a particular relevance from the beginning of the fifties. This was an important sector and a crucial one for the company's growth. This growth regarded the level of average production, also from the quantitative aspect. The sheer extent of work done led the firm to undertake an internal reorganisation, to allow articles to be mass-produced in less time but with the same high-quality result. Amongst the more noteworthy furnishing schemes in this category are the San Remo Casin, the Saint Vincent Casin, the different branches of the Motta Bar in Milan, the Savini restaurant in Milan, the Hotel Europa Palace in Anacapri, the Hotel Royal in Naples, and the Hotel Diana in Milan. CASSINA AND GIO PONTI Cassina's activity in the fifties is firmly bound up with the creative genius of Gio Ponti. In the furnishing schemes that he produced during these years there seem to be two opposite trends; on the one hand there is the classicism evident in the decorated furniture designed in collaboration with Piero Fornasetti, and on the other a growing tendency towards modernism, towards "slim-lined, light" objects. The slender, taut line of the side of the Distex chair (mod. 807, 1953) reflects quite clearly the evolution of Ponti's design poetics. Made with the

arms full of acute geometrical angles, and with wooden feet, another version had legs/arms in metal. In this latter version it was used by Ponti in his furnishing for the "Unienvironmental Living Space" for the 10th Triennale in Milan. The Distex chair is exemplary and symptomatic of the production of upholstered furniture at this time in its use of foam rubber and elastic webbing, which by now have taken the place of the traditional sprung upholstery, and new materials like vinyl simulated leather, vipla and flexa for the covering. LIGHT CHAIRS Gio Ponti's mod. 646 chair, called the Leggera, represents the intermediary moment of that design process on the theme of a modern mass-produced chair which led eventually to the mod. 699, the Superleggera, one of the archetypes of Italian design. In 1949 there appeared in Domus (240) a chair in painted ash wood, containing what seemed the spore of certain formal paradigms of Ponti-type research - such as the folded back and the pointed supports. Cassina put this model into production in 1952. But it was not until 1957 that Ponti's study of the chair - "chair, like chair, just that with no adjectives, that is to say just a chair, but light, slender and reasonable" (Domus 268, 1952) realty came into being. Deriving from of the traditional Ligurian chair of Chiavari, the Superleggera is the indisputable fruit of Gio Ponti's study and Cassina's ability and skill in experimentation and working; the structure of the origial Leggera had been progressively lightened and the shape of the supports modified to achieve a solution characterised by a perfect balance of solidity and lightness. The adoption of a triangular section, only 18 mm., in the structure of the legs, and a weight of just 1.66 kg brings the identification of the shape with the structure to its limit. It's a light chair, but very strong, of which Ponti himself goes on record as having said: "If you go to the Cassina works, they will give you a thrilling show, throwing these chairs about and showing you how they fall to earth and bounce, but never break" (Domus 268, 1952). Produced and sold for getting on for fifty years, the Superleggera is a symbol of the force of the dialectics between the poetics of the designer and the technological know-how and tenacity of the Cassina craftsmen. Done in natural or lacquered ash, it's made nowadays exclusively with the seat in rattan just like its forbears from Chiavari.

THE COMPASSO D'ORO GOES TO CARLO DE CARLI AND CASSINA The Compasso d'Oro, the prize that ratified the official birth of Italian design and destined to single out its best results over the years, was awarded for the first time in 1954. Amongst the winners on this first occasion was the mod. 683 designed by Carlo De Carli for Cassina. In solid ash wood, redolent of organic references, it has slender tapering legs and an Lshaped feature to support the seat and the back. These last two, in slender curved ash plywood, seem to wrap around the structural unit, to which they are joined by little wooden spacers. The mod. 683 were awarded the Diploma of Honour at the 10th Milan Triennale, and MoMA's Good Design prize in New York. ICO PARISI'S MODERN DESIGN Another important and fruitful collaboration for Cassina is that with Ico Parisi, one of the leaders of Italian design in the fifties. His furniture is one of the most interesting interpretations of modern design of the period. This is borne out by Parisi's unremitting participation in exhibitions and fittings-out, particularly at the Milan Triennale. The mod. 691 chair (1956) sums up the typical lines of the period, with its lightness and X-shaped support structure, modelled on certain organic bone forms, with pointed and tapering tips. GIANFRANCO FRATTINI'S SUCCESFUL PRODUCTS Cassina's collaboration with Gianfranco Frattini started in 1954. Frattini designed various models (among which, the armchairs mod.831 and mod. 849 and the chairs mod. 101, mod. 102, mod. 104, mod. 105 and mod. 107) which show the most sensitive and advanced taste of the period, so pieces signed by him go to make up 60% of Cassina production at the beginning of the sixties. The mod. 849 armchair features an evident distancing between the two sections, a clear separation between the wooden trestle of the structure and the back and seat/arm shell; the simple sturdy geometry of the bearing framework contrasts with the flexible curves of the upholstery, which seems to be almost suspended in the air.

SIXTIES ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND THE NEW ITALIAN HOME In the fifties new and old production systems existed side by side. On the one hand there were still anonymous models, repetitious mutations of one example acting as prototype, while on the other there was more and more collaboration and co-operation with the designer, witness of the desire to upgrade industrial production and to achieve really new products. The Italian culture of design responded to the intuition of those manufacturers - Cassina among them - who saw an opportunity in the transformation of life-styles in front of the thrust of the processes of the modernisation and industrialisation of the country. They banked on the fact that modern furniture would open up the market to the up-dating of the Italian home. Once the traditional models were rejected, buying a piece of modern furniture would become for the new consumer a symbol of belonging to a new climate of behaviour. AFRA AND TOBIA SCARPA: OLD AND NEW MATERIALS The sixties were decisive years for Italian design and its diffusion in the world. With the advent of plastics and injection produced or pre-impregnated or expanded materials, furniture was no longer bound to conform to traditional shapes and forms. The Ciprea armchair (1968), for example, designed by Afra and Tobia Scarpa, moves away from the classic upholstered item both in its design and in the concept of its structure. Indeed, it is not an upholstered armchair at all but a single block of expanded injected polyurethane, with dacron quilting incorporated in the interchangeable covering. Tobia Scarpa and his wife Afra began to work with Cassina in 1963, and are responsible also for a series of solid wood articles, echo of a neverforgotten crafts tradition and reworked in a personal repertoire of shapes. THE BIRTH OF THE 'CASSINA I MAESTRI' COLLECTION 1964, with the acquisition of reproduction rights of four items designed by Le Corbusier (who was still alive at this date) together with Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand - viz. the small LC1 armchair, the LC2 and LC3 armchairs and the LC4 chaise longue - saw the beginning of the collection called "Cassina I Maestri" (Cassina Masters), which went on in the following years to gather together furniture by the most important names of 20th century design. The principal objective was, and still is, the diffusion of universally accredited cultural values through the re proposal - today - of "reconstructed" furniture.

This process of reconstruction, made possible by the direct involvement of the designers' respective heirs, is founded on a work of accurate analysis and painstaking reinterpretation of the prototypes and/or original drawings. The research and the reconstruction project take place with the help of Professor Filippo Alison, director of the degree course in furnishings and product design at the University of Naples Federico II and curator of the collection "Cassina I Maestri". The "Cassina I Maestri" collection widened with the acquisition from Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin of reproduction rights of some of the Bauhaus objects (fabrics and chessmen) in 1968, of Gerrit T.Rietveld in 1971 (licensing agreement stipulated with the daughter Elisabeth Eskes-Rietveld) and of Charles R. Mackintosh in 1972 (licensing agreement undersigned with the Glasgow School of Art and the University of Glasgow). The Masters collection continues with the re-issue in 1983 of furniture by E. Gunnar Asplund (among the others the Gteborg armchair, designed in 1934-37), with the acquisition from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation of rights of reproduction (1986) of furniture by Frank Lloyd Wright, including the Barrel chair designed in 1937, and, finally, in 2004 furniture by Charlotte Perriand (exclusive licensing agreement undersigned with her daughter, Pernette Perriand Barsac).

SEVENTIES BRACCIODIFERRO: CASSINA AND RADICAL DESIGN From the second half of the sixties onward, Italian design, notably influenced by the trends of the international neo-avantgarde (from New Dada to Pop Art) gave rise to projects acidly critical of mass-production and closer to the art multiple. The "dissenting" design entered Cassina through the Bracciodi Ferro collection (a workshop of ideas of furniture design), a bearer of new instances and provocations reaching radical designers such as Alessandro Mendini and Gaetano Pesce. Their articles for BracciodiFerro are a scenic interpretation of furnishing taken to the point of a negation of any kind of function; no longer furniture but representations of themselves and the rites linked to their use. Amongst the models produced in numbered examples are the Golgotha chairs (1972) by Gaetano Pesce - made in fibreglass-reinforced plastic starting off from a white wadded fibre-glass unit containing dacron Fiberfill, saturated manually with hardening polyester resin - and the Terra chair (1972) by Alessandro Mendini, a "proto-shape" made of plexiglass and earth.

ARCHIZOOM - PAOLO DEGANELLO In the same cultural climate of dissent and second thoughts came the AEO armchair (1973) designed by Paolo Deganello - Archizoom - in collaboration with the Cassina Centre. The product is the expression of an ideology free of conventions, seeking out an article "new in the field of the sit table infinite." Structural and linguistic analyses of existing seats led Archizoom to the demystification of the myth of the modern armchair, which had become a "mass of soft material, symbol of opulence and well-being", to the "rediscovery" of the elements that make up the structure of the chair itself. The AEO armchair certainly has great advantages of use in that it can be taken apart, washed, go with whatever kind of furniture (as it is an object devoid of any kind of preceding linguistic reference), it is light and comfortable. It is also unprejudiced and experimental in its use. The nature of the object is poly-material. A grey base of injected Durethane, a stove-enamelled steel framework upon which is fitted - like a shirt -the cotton covering forming back and arms. There is a cushion padded in expanded polyurethane and polyester padding as a seat. MARIO BELLINI: NEW TECHNOLOGIES, NEW SHAPES The introduction of new technology is a fundamental occasion for the abandonment of traditional models of upholstered furniture. With mod. 932 (1965) designed by Mario Bellini the upholstery itself becomes the armchair. It is a set of two/three/four cushions, independently finished, assembled and held together by a kind of belt. The sofa and bed Le Mura (1972) are the fruit of research on foaming carried out at the Cassina Research Centre and on upholstery by Bellini. Both sofa and bed are done by the technique of cold moulded plastic foam. There followed experiments in differentiated cold foaming to meet different needs of softness and structural strength. ITALY: THE NEW DOMESTIC LANDSCAPE The exhibition "Italy: the New Domestic Landscape" put on at the MoMA of New York in 1972, curated by Emilio Ambasz and sponsored by Cassina, Cassina Centre, C&B Italia, Citron and Pirelli Industries represented the culmination and at the same time the crisis of Italian design, by this time running off towards its utopia. Mario Bellini, one of the designers invited, presented his Kar-a-Sutra, an automobile prototype made by the Cassina Research Centre, a body set up in 1969 for experimentation and formulation of design concepts. Kar-a-Sutra represented identification between car and house, in strict relationship with forecast visions of nomadic life-styles. It has an

area of some eight cubic metres, and is seen as capable of carrying out infinity of actions. It is accessible from every side, and is made to be lived in, by one person or a group. The inside of the car is entirely covered in upholstery cushions, which take on and retain the various contours caused by the various bodies leaning against or sitting on them, giving life to a plastic field available for any new configuration of use. IL LIBRO DELL'ARREDAMENTO BY MARIO BELLINI (MARIO BELLINI'S BOOK OF FURNITURE) "Design is dead; the funeral was held at the Museum of Modern Art (with the 'Italy: the New Domestic Landscape' exhibition): some chairs have already been thrown on the pyre; 'style design' has passed from the columns in women's magazines to the signs of shops selling modern kitchen furniture..." proclaimed Mario Bellini after having been one of the protagonists of the exhibition. His reaction to this was to design and make ready Il Libro dell'Arredamento (The Book of Furniture), a sort of new general reader of furnishing, an abacus done for Cassina, in which he takes one by one the primary functions of furniture, redesigning the various "types" without getting too far from traditional shapes and forms but suggesting a lot of variations referable to "characteristics of use" (functions) and "semantic characteristics" (materials and finishes). The little Break armchair (1976) is one of the possible seats in this ideal abacus. It has a framework of flexible steel with panels of high-density polyurethane foam and assembled by means of special hooks at the base with a full-length zip running along the sides of the panels. The series of tables (1976), La Loggia, La Basilica, La Rotonda, La Corte and Il Colonnato refer to the shapes of the "primary structures" in the history of architecture, from which derives a complete system of solutions suited to every need. From the same reflection on semantic values comes another milestone of Italian design: the CAB chair (1977) head of a family of chairs - a carver with arms, a small armchair and a little sofa. In its privileged relationship with the human body, the chair is according to Bellini one of the pieces of furniture most deeply rooted in the collective memory. CAB is conceived almost as an extension of the body itself. It has a skeleton of tubular steel and a covering of stitched leather, fastened to the framework with four zips. An integral covering is stretched just like a skin over a metal framework in a relationship of structural and organic harmony. VICO MAGISTRETTI: MODERNITY IN TRADITION Vico Magistretti came to Cassina at the beginning of the sixties, the ten-year period in Italian design richest in events, initiatives and transformations, in which the designer plays the lead but supported by certain entrepreneurs in love with their job. Magistretti loves to remember, even today, his meetings with Cesare Cassina and how they worked together on new projects, discussing a sketch here, defining a detail there. The Carimate chair (mod. 115) was the first of many successes bearing their signature. It was designed for a

specific setting - the Clubhouse of the Carimate golf club - and it became head of a family of furniture that includes also the small armchair Mod. 892 (1963). In Magistretti's work modernity is the echo of tradition and collected memories, but also the study and in-depth investigation of ways of living, such as modular units, flexibility and stackability, as in the case of the mod. 913 beds (1964) which stack one above the other. Alongside the experimental suggestions of the radical designers (Mendini, Pesce, Archizoom), in the seventies and eighties Cassina made some of Magistretti's masterpieces: the Maralunga sofa (1973), the Nuvola Rossa bookcase (1977) and the Sindbad armchair (1981). Following a traditional matrix form, the Maralunga sofa is a piece of great impact which hides its innovation (the alternative of transforming the back from high to low at a single touch) in its reassuring lines. It was a great international success and the object of many imitations. Nuvola Rossa (1977) is a bookcase of extreme simplicity with its cross-braced shelving. Here more than in other projects, Magistretti analyses and reinterprets the constituent elements of ordinary pieces of furniture (in this case the familiar and taken-forgranted bookcase with its shelves and sides). In the leanest of lines (eliminating the side panels the structure pares down to just the cross-bracing) but a most elegant shape and perfectly functional. The Sindbad model, a kind of blanket/upholstery, was inspired by the idea of a rug thrown carelessly over a sofa together with the image of a horse blanket (on its horse) that Magistretti had seen in England. The innovation is concentrated in the complete removability and changeability of the covering, which is attached to the upholstered structure - in expended polyurethane and polyester wadding on a steel framework by means of two clasps on the inner edges of the seat. Pressure strips and two clips towards the edges of the back hold it in place.

EIGHTIES TOSHIYUKI KITA: NEW TYPES OF FURNISHING "An armchair that adapts itself to the shape of the person" is how the Japanese designer Toshiyuki Kita defines his Wink armchair (1980), born from a complex interweave of eastern and western styles. It can be treated as an armchair or as a chaise longue by folding the base down forwards. The angle of the back is also adjustable and has a headrest subdivided in two parts, each one independently adjustable. This piece is so highly adaptable in all its forms, and is quite informal allowing the user the utmost liberty of movement.

GAETANO PESCE: LE SPERIMENTAZIONI FORMALI DIVENTANO PRODOTTO The upholstered furniture that Gaetano Pesce designed for Cassina in the seventies and eighties are to be taken as a paradigm of his thoughts on the autodetermination of taste. The objective of obdurate planning during the 20th century he claims - has led to a devious repression of the consumer; in face of such homologation our life has lost its spontaneity. Pesce is convinced that being alive means being different. Things, too, must be able to enjoy this prerogative. The details of the shape of his Sit Down chairs (1975) change from one example to the next while maintaining the same general lines of the whole series. In the production of the series, the polyurethane foam is used in a simpler way, to achieve items that are similar but not identical. The upholstered items are done in a single block of expanded polyurethane injected into a mould in which polyester wadding is spread and the bearing steel framework reinforced with straps is placed. The injected polyurethane fills the mould freely and spontaneously, forming an outline wherever it meets up with spaces in the back unit or the seat, thereby producing a slightly different shape each time. The Tramonto a New York sofa (1980) confirms the role of metaphor that Gaetano Pesce attributes to design. His items are means of expression rather than just objects. New York is in a phase of decadence, maybe approaching its sunset? Pesce explains this sensation through the shape and concept of his furniture. The Tramonto a New York sofa is made up of an assembly of various elements that act as seats, arms (the skyscraper blocks of New York) and the back (the red sun); these elements are held together by means of U-shaped metal bars. The bearing structure of the seating is made of multi-layered panels and a beech frame with straps, and a steel sprung framework with springs (the semi-circular part of the back). The upholstered parts are shaped polyurethane blocks. A polyester wadding is fitted over, topped by the final cover. The Sansone table (1980) is a further demonstration of Pesce's need for a form of mass production in which the numbers of a series are diversified. The table is in cast moulded polyester resin. The three versions available - almost rectangular, almost square and almost round - come in combinations of white, red and green, each piece different. "The future belongs to soft materials! Folded felt can provide anything you want, from cupboards to chairs. This is how I intend to make the furniture of the future." Research into new materials and new technologies is still Pesce's main interest. Mod. 357, Feltri, (1987) for example is done in thick, heavy felt stiffened with thermosetting resin, a treatment that guarantees great freedom of shape. The interiors are lined with quilting, removable and held in place by press-fasteners. The seat is linked to the framework by stout cotton straps which also edge the sort upper part of the seat.

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NINETIES SINGLE PRODUCTS AND NOT FAMILIES There are encounters that lead to a long-lasting collaboration, and others that run out after the production of just one project, even if very successful. In the Cassina catalogue you can find furniture by designers that worked with the firm for a short time, or with projects that did not go on to generate prolific families, even if just the one-off item was appreciated and well-received by the public. Amongst these "only children" are Theodore Waddell's 713/714 tables (1973), the Oskar table by Isao Hosoe (1991), Andrea Branzi's Revers chair (1993), the Pagina bookcase by Jean Louis Berthet / Denis Vasset (1993). There is also one product designed by Francesco Binfar who was director of the Cassina Research and Development Centre from 1969 to 1976: the sofa Grandangolo (1995-2000).

THE NEW DESIGNERS: FROM PHILIPPE STARCK TO JEAN MARIE MASSAUD In the past ten years, as had already happened before, Cassina has established a relationship of privileged collaboration with certain designers, which has brought about interesting innovations regarding both shape and use. As always, Cassina has been active in an eclecticism giving room to contributors apparently very discordant amongst themselves. From the working relationship with Philippe Starck has come - as might well be expected - surprising results; the MISS C.O.C.O folding chair (1998), the fully "wired-up" L.W.S Lazy Working Sofa (1998), the bed/work-table S.W.B. Sleepy Working Bed (1999), the audiovisual sofa M.I.S.S. Music Image Sofa System (2002,2004), the sofa MISTER (2004). The most recent one is MISS YOU: presented on occasion of the 2005 Furniture Fair in Milan, this bed has the distinguishing ironic strength of a "Starck's project". Piero Lissoni was entrusted with the fitting out of display areas and the design of numerous lines highly appreciated for their sober elegance, such as his Met sofa (1996), among Cassina's bestsellers, the Nest (1999) and Reef (2001) upholstered items, and the Flat container system (1999). Important, too, the re-reading of established lines - beds, tables, chairs, bookcases, armchairs and sofas - that Cassina entrusted to to the Spanish (of Argentinian origin) designer Jorge Pensi, the Swiss Hannes Wettstein, the German designers Markus Jehs + Jrgen Laub, and the Frenchmen Patrick Jouin and Jean-Marie Massaud and the Swiss Cuno Frommherz, designers of most recent products. In particular, Jean-Marie Massaud designed the sofas Aspen (2005), sophisticated and simple at a time, like the wave of a dune (or perhaps smooth as a rock), and the swivel armchair Auckland (2005), having a "swinging" shell fitted to a four-spoke base by means of a projecting strip. The sofas and the armchair were launched at the IMM 2005 Furniture Fair in Cologne.

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CASSINA I MAESTRI: CHARLOTTE PERRIAND In 2004 the Cassina Masters collection was enriched by the addition of another protagonist, Charlotte Perriand (1903 1999), who worked in collaboration with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, and without whom, perhaps, the chaise-longue, the sige tournant and fauteuil grand confort that Cassina has been producing for forty years would never have come about. Acknowledging her role as Master, Cassina pays homage to a great 20th century designer, with the pieces inserted in the collection dedicated to her (amongst which the Ventaglio tables, designed in 1972, and Ospite, of 1927) show without a shadow of doubt.

PRESENT SHOWROOM IN MILAN, NEW YORK AND PARIS Cassina has its own showrooms in Milan, New York and Paris. The original, in Via Durini, Milan, was opened in 1968 to the design by Mario Bellini. It covers about 1,200 square metres, and at street level it surrounds a cement dome almost 20 metres in diameter and 8 metres high. It underwent a first rebuilding in 1979, to the plan of Vico Magistretti. The central space above the "big dome" was divided by two semi-circular galleries, with access from a big flight of steps visible from the showroom entrance. In 1985, Clino Trini Castelli (with Maerek Piotrovski and CDM) did away with the gallery and decorated the dome with a design aimed at making the space more luminous. In 1987 Achille Castiglioni took a hand, transforming the circular space with a web of little points of light. The next transformation, in 1994, put the gallery back, with a wide staircase and staggered landings leading up to it. A further transformation in 2003, to the design of Giancarlo Tintori, led to the showroom in its present form. Cassina's New York Showroom, 500 square metres on 56th Street, between Third Avenue and Lexington Avenue, opened in 1994 designed by Dario Caimi and Franco Asnaghi of Meda. It was on two levels, with windows onto the street. The articles on display were well presented and clearly visible, and the space lent itself to the role of meeting place for designers and clients. In 2004, Cassina decided to double the area of the showroom and entrusted the work of rebuilding to Giancarlo Tintori. A new staircase in steel leads visitors to the centre of the lower level, while ubiquitous red surfaces form wings which house the various collections. Cassina's Manhattan showroom is thus re-established as point of reference for architects and designers alike. Already present in Paris since the seventies with a showroom on the Rive Droite (Right Bank), in the autumn of 2003, Cassina opened its new Parisian showroom on the

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corner of Rue de Bac and Boulevarde Saint Germain designed by Piero Lissoni with the collaboration of Giulia Clausetti. It is in a building characterised by an uninterrupted single glass curve stretching 25 metres in length. Four metres high, this glass screen contains the seven show windows presenting the contents at street level. The interior is arranged on five levels so articulated as to broaden and open up the space to the viewer. The minimalism of the architecture puts the visitor at his ease and at the same time shows of the furniture displayed to its best advantage. Materials and colours show off the individual products, helped by a clever use of both natural and artificial lighting. Projecting like the prow of a ship towards the city, the Cassina showroom adds a further lively element to the townscape of this famous Parisian boulevarde. Cassinas continuous pursuit of design innovation and quality remains as true today through the work of some of the worlds leading designers of the 20th and 21st century, I Contemporanei (Modern Masters) including: Mario Bellini, Gio Ponti, Vico Magistretti, Toshiyuki Kita, Gaetano Pesce, Theodore Waddell, Hannes Wettstein, Philippe Starck, Jean-Marie Massaud, Piero Lissoni, and others. Today, Cassina continues to lead the furniture design industry in quality, research and innovation. Their emphasis on detail and craftsmanship allows them to produce pieces that are true to the original design especially those of the more transcendent works from the earlier days.

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design profile
LC4 (LC 4) LOUNGE CHAIR WITH PONY HIDE LE CORBUSIER, PIERRE JEANNERET, CHARLOTTE PERRIAND: SALON D'AUTOMNE, 1929 - Designed in 1928 - Type of chair: Deckchair continuously adjustable - Size: 160x54x75 (cm)

MATERIAL AND FINISHES Specification - Chaise longue with adjustable polished chrome plated or matte black enamel steel frame. Matte black enamel steel base. Material - ponyskin or cowskin (black leather headrest) - black leather (black leather headrest) - special beige canvas (natural, dark brown or black headrest and footrest). - headrest with polyester padding. TECHNICAL DESIGN

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IDENTIFYING MARK

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architect profile
CHARLES-DOUARD JEANNERET-GRIS LE CORBUSIER Charles-douard Jeanneret-Gris, who chose to be known as Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887 August 27, 1965), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and also painter, who is famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called Modern architecture or the International Style. He was born in Switzerland, but became a French citizen in his 30s. He was a pioneer in studies of modern high design and was dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities. His career spanned five decades, with his buildings constructed throughout central Europe, India, Russia, and one each in North and South America. He was also an urban planner, painter, sculptor, writer, and modern furniture designer. Early life and education, 1887-1913 He was born as Charles-douard Jeanneret-Gris in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a small city in Neuchtel canton in north-western Switzerland, in the Jura mountains, which is just five kilometres across the border from France. He attended a kindergarten that used Frbelian methods. Le Corbusier was attracted to the visual arts and studied at the La-Chaux-de-Fonds Art School under Charles L'Eplattenier, who had studied in Budapest and Paris. His architecture teacher in the Art School was the architect Ren Chapallaz, who had a large influence on Le Corbusier's earliest houses. In his early years he would frequently escape the somewhat provincial atmosphere of his hometown by travelling around Europe. About 1907, he travelled to Paris, where he found work in the office of Auguste Perret, the French pioneer of reinforced concrete. Between October 1910 and March 1911, he worked near Berlin for the renowned architect Peter Behrens, where he might have met Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius. He became fluent in German. Both of these experiences proved influential in his later career. Later in 1911, he journeyed to the Balkans and visited Greece and Turkey, filling sketchbooks with renderings of what he saw, including many famous sketches of the Parthenon, whose forms he would later praise in his work Vers une architecture (1923) (towards an architecture).

Early career: the villas, 1914-1930 Le Corbusier taught at his old school in La-Chaux-de-Fonds during World War I, not returning to Paris until the war was over. During these four years in Switzerland, he worked on theoretical architectural studies using modern techniques. Among these was his project for the "Dom-ino" House (1914-1915). This model proposed an open floor plan consisting of concrete slabs supported by a minimal number of thin, reinforced concrete columns around the edges, with a stairway providing access to each level on one side of the floor plan. This design became the foundation for most of his architecture for the next ten years. Soon he would begin his own architectural practice with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret (1896-1967), a partnership that would last until 1940. In 1918, Le Corbusier met the disillusioned Cubist painter, Amde Ozenfant, in whom he recognised a kindred spirit. Ozenfant encouraged him to paint, and the two began a period of collaboration. Rejecting Cubism as irrational and "romantic," the pair jointly published their manifesto, Aprs le Cubisme and established a new artistic

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movement, Purism. Ozenfant and Jeanneret established the Purist journal L'Esprit Nouveau. He was good friends with the Cubist artist Fernand Lger.

IDEAS FIVE POINTS OF ARCHITECTURE It was Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye (1929-1931) that most succinctly summed up his five points of architecture that he had elucidated in the journal L'Esprit Nouveau and his book Vers une architecture, which he had been developing throughout the 1920s. First, Le Corbusier lifted the bulk of the structure off the ground, supporting it by pilotis reinforced concrete stilts. Thesepilotis, in providing the structural support for the house, allowed him to elucidate his next two points: a free faade, meaning nonsupporting walls that could be designed as the architect wished, and an open floor plan, meaning that the floor space was free to be configured into rooms without concern for supporting walls. The second floor of the Villa Savoye includes long strips of ribbon windows that allow unencumbered views of the large surrounding yard, and which constitute the fourth point of his system. The fifth point was the Roof garden to compensate the green area consumed by the building and replacing it on the roof. A ramp rising from the ground level to the third floor roof terrace, allows for an architectural promenade through the structure. The white tubular railing recalls the industrial "ocean-liner" aesthetic that Le Corbusier much admired. As if to put an exclamation point on Le Corbusier's homage to modern industry, the driveway around the ground floor, with its semicircular path, measures the exact turning radius of a 1927 Citron automobile.

THE MODULAR Le Corbusier explicitly used the golden ratio in his Modulor system for the scale of architectural proportion. He saw this system as a continuation of the long tradition of Vitruvius, Leonardo da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man", the work of Leon Battista Alberti, and others who used the proportions of the human body to improve the Cover of Modulor and Modulor 2 appearance and function of architecture. In addition to the golden ratio, Le Corbusier based the system on human measurements, Fibonacci numbers, and the double unit. He took Leonardo's suggestion of the golden ratio in human proportions to an extreme: he sectioned his model human body's height at the navel with the two sections in golden ratio, then subdivided those sections in golden ratio at the knees and throat; he used these golden ratio proportions in the Modulor system. Le Corbusier's 1927 Villa Stein in Garches exemplified the Modulor system's application. The villa's rectangular ground plan, elevation, and inner structure closely approximate golden rectangles. Le Corbusier placed systems of harmony and proportion at the centre of his design philosophy, and his faith in the mathematical order of the universe was closely bound to the golden section and the Fibonacci series, which he described as rhythms apparent to the eye and clear in their relations with one another. And these rhythms are at the very root of human activities. They resound in Man by an organic inevitability, the same fine inevitability which causes the tracing out of the Golden Section by children, old men, savages, and the learned.

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FURNITURE Corbusier said: "Chairs are architecture, sofas are bourgeois." Le Corbusier began experimenting with furniture design in 1928 after inviting the architect, Charlotte Perriand, to join his studio. His cousin, Pierre Jeanneret, also collaborated on many of the designs. Before the arrival of Perriand, Le Corbusier relied on ready-made furniture to furnish his projects, such as the simple pieces manufactured by Thonet, the company that manufactured his designs in the 1930s. In 1928, Le Corbusier and Perriand began to put the expectations for furniture Le Corbusier outlined in his 1925 book L'Art Dcoratif d'aujourd'hui into practice. In the book he defined three different furniture types: type-needs, type-furniture, and human-limb objects. He defined human-limb objects as: "Extensions of our limbs and adapted to human functions that are. Type-needs, type-functions, therefore type-objects and type-furniture. The human-limb object is a docile servant. A good servant is discreet and self-effacing in order to leave his master free. Certainly, works of art are tools, beautiful tools. And long live the good taste manifested by choice, subtlety, proportion, and harmony". The first results of the collaboration were three chrome-plated tubular steel chairs designed for two of his projects, The Maison la Roche in Paris and a pavilion for Barbara and Henry Church. The line of furniture was expanded for Le Corbusier's 1929 Salon d'Automne installation, Equipment for the Home. In the year 1964, while Le Corbusier was still alive, Cassina S.p.A. of Milan acquired the exclusive worldwide rights to manufacture his furniture designs. Today many copies exist, but Cassina is still the only manufacturer authorised by the Fondation Le Corbusier

INFLUENCE Le Corbusier was at his most influential in the sphere of urban planning, and was a founding member of the Congrs International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM). One of the first to realise how the automobile would change human agglomerations, Le Corbusier described the city of the future as consisting of large apartment buildings isolated in apark-like setting on pilotis. Le Corbusier's theories were adopted by the builders of public housing in Western Europe and the United States. For the design of the buildings themselves, Le Corbusier criticised any effort at ornamentation. The large spartan structures, in cities, but not of cities, have been widely criticised for being boring and unfriendly to pedestrians. Throughout the years, many architects worked for Le Corbusier in his studio, and a number of them became notable in their own right, including painter-architect Nadir Afonso, who absorbed Le Corbusier's ideas into his own aesthetics theory. Lcio Costa's city plan of Braslia and the industrial city of Zln planned by Frantiek Lydie Gahura in the Czech Republic are notable plans based on his ideas, while the architect himself produced the plan for Chandigarh in India. Le Corbusier's thinking also had profound effects on the philosophy of city planning and architecture in the Soviet Union, particularly in the Constructivist era. Le Corbusier was heavily influenced by the problems he saw in the industrial city of the turn of the century. He thought that industrial housing techniques led to crowding, dirtiness, and a lack of a moral landscape. He was a leader of the modernist movement to create better living conditions and a better society through housing concepts. Ebenezer Howard's Garden Cities of Tomorrow heavily influenced Le Corbusier and his contemporaries.

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Le Corbusier also harmonized and lent credence to the idea of space as a set of destinations which mankind moved between, more or less continuously. He was therefore able to give credence and credibility to the automobile (as a transporter); and most importantly to freeways in urban spaces. His philosophies were useful to urban real estate development interests in the American Post World War II period because they justified and lent architectural and intellectual support to the desire to destroy traditional urban space for high density high profit urban concentration; both commercial and residential. Le Corbusiers ideas also sanctioned the further destruction of traditional urban spaces for the freeways that connected this new urbanism to the low density; low cost (and highly profitable), suburban and rural locales; which were free to be developed as middle class single family (dormitory) housing. Notably missing from this scheme of movement were connectivity between the isolated urban villages created for the lower middle and working classes and the other destination points in the Le Corbusier plan; the suburban and rural areas, and the urban commercial centers. This was because as designed, the freeways traveled over, at, or beneath the grade levels of the urban working and lower middle class living spaces, such as the Cabrini Green housing project. Such projects and their areas, having no freeway exit ramps, and being cut-off by the freeways rights-of-way, became isolated from jobs and the services that came to be concentrated at Le Corbusiers nodal transportation end points. And as jobs increasingly moved to the suburban end points of the freeways; urban village dwellers found themselves without convenient freeway access points in their communities; and without public mass transit connectivity that could economically reach suburban job centers. Very late in the Post War period suburban job centers found this to be such a critical problem (labor shortages) that they on their own, began sponsoring urban to suburban shuttle bus services, between the urban villages and the suburban job centers, to fill the working class and lower-middle class jobs which had gone wanting; and which did not normally pay the wages that car ownership required. The gradually increasing costs of transportation (of which fuel in only one element), and the decline in middle and upper class taste for the suburban and rural lifestyle has resulted in the repudiation of Le Corbusiers ideas. Urban centers are now the most desirable real estate areas. Condominium living is being rediscovered as the preferred form of living in urban spaces from Nashville, TN and Columbus, IN to South Miami Beach, FL and Atlanta, GA. Most central business districts of cities now hum with residential activity after working hours, or are on the way to doing so. Le Corbusier deliberately created a myth about himself and was revered in his lifetime, and after death, by a generation of followers who believed Le Corbusier was a prophet who could do no wrong. But in the 1950s the first doubts began to appear, notably in some essays by his greatest admirers such as James Stirling and Colin Rowe, who denounced as catastrophic his ideas on the city. Later critics revealed his technical incompetence as an architect, such as Brian Brace Taylor, whose book Arme du Salut went into great detail about Le Corbusier's Machiavellian activities to create this commission for himself, his many ill-judged design decisions about the building's technologies, and the sometimes absurd solutions he then proposed.

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bibliography

1. http://www.cassina.com/ENG/ 2. http://www.alibaba.com/productgs/207680675/Le_Corbusier_LC4_Chaise_Lounge.html 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier

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