Why design history matters: lessons from Cassina’s iMaestri

History as a component of education is absolutely essential. It is a useful starting point for considering fifty years of Cassina’s iMaestri collection. To design for the future, we need to understand what previous generations discovered, the conditions they worked within and the questions they left open.

Furniture makes that history accessible. We can sit in a chair designed a century ago and experience its proportions, structure and comfort directly. We can examine how it was assembled and understand why a particular material was chosen. The object allows us to test an idea through use. It transports us back in time.

This is an essential part of design education. Knowing the name or date of a piece is a beginning. Deeper understanding comes from examining why it took that form and what it contributed to the way people lived.

What the masters teach us

Established by Cassina in Italy in 1973, iMaestri brings together the work of designers including Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Charlotte Perriand, Gerrit Thomas Rietveld and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. They worked in different circumstances and held distinct views, but each investigated the relationship between the object, the body and the surrounding space.

Their furniture allows us to follow that thinking. How much structure was necessary? Could a piece be manufactured efficiently and made available to more people? How might it support a different way of living? These questions brought social ambitions into direct contact with the realities of production. They remain relevant today as we reconsider resources, affordability, and the responsibility to design for a longer useful life.

Cassina recognised the value of keeping this work in production. From its base in Meda, northern Italy, the company combined research into original designs with craftsmanship and industrial expertise. Its acquisition of production rights for furniture by Le Corbusier, Jeanneret and Perriand in 1964, followed by production in 1965, laid the groundwork for the collection.

Design responds to its circumstances

The history of furniture is closely connected to the history of society. Industrialisation, war, political movements and economic change shaped the conditions in which the masters worked. New ideas about housing, social equality and domestic life challenged established conventions, while advances in manufacturing changed what could be produced—and at what cost.

These relationships deserve attention. A designer might seek to make furniture widely accessible, yet encounter manufacturing costs that limit its reach. A new material might offer greater freedom of form while requiring unfamiliar equipment or skills. Understanding those tensions gives us a more complete view of an object’s achievement.

Rietveld’s work developed within the Dutch De Stijl movement, exploring relationships between colour, planes and structure. Le Corbusier, Jeanneret and Perriand approached furniture through the modernist investigations of interwar France. Their work expressed ideas about how the home, and life within it, could change.

By the time iMaestri was established in 1973, Italian designers were questioning consumption, domestic conventions and the responsibilities of their profession. The previous year’s exhibition, Italy: The New Domestic Landscape at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, had presented competing positions on these subjects. The oil crisis of 1973 brought additional pressures on energy supplies and industrial production.

The collection emerged within this period of debate about design’s direction. Earlier work provided a body of experience against which new ambitions could be considered.

Materials carry knowledge

Much of what we admire in furniture began with a material question. What happens when timber is bent or laminated? How can a steel tube carry weight with minimal bulk? How can upholstery provide support while allowing freedom of movement?

Advances in steel, plywood, plastics and upholstery changed the possibilities of furniture. Their application depended on experiment, manufacturing knowledge and the ability to learn from failure. The finished piece is the visible outcome of that process.

This way of thinking is important to our practice. Hilda Impey’s formation in Textile Futures at Central Saint Martins encouraged enquiry into materials: their behaviour, their cultural associations and the possibilities they might offer in the future.

Studying historical work strengthens that attention. It helps us recognise the intelligence in a simple joint or the experimentation behind an apparently effortless form. It also gives us a better basis for deciding where further research is needed.

Keeping the knowledge of making alive

Designing and making furniture require considerable judgement. Drawings must be tested through prototypes; materials and construction methods must be understood through practice. Preserving a design therefore depends on sustaining the knowledge and skills needed to realise it.

This responsibility takes on renewed significance as artificial intelligence accelerates the generation of ideas and images. Speed can encourage us to bypass the trial and error through which understanding develops. Yet making, encountering resistance and correcting mistakes teach us to judge. Mastering a craft develops an understanding of materials and consequences that an image alone cannot provide.

Continuing to practise and teach these skills is essential. Human creativity is part of how we adapt, give meaning to experience and contribute to a shared culture. Each generation inherits knowledge through the work of others, tests it and adds something of its own. Collections such as iMaestri preserve evidence of that process. Their continuing value depends on keeping both the objects and the human capacity to make them alive.

Furniture is part of our lives

Furniture shapes much of what happens within a room. Where people sit, how they face one another and whether they feel comfortable enough to remain are design decisions with direct social consequences. The quality of the experience emerges from the balance between proximity and privacy, movement and stillness, formality and ease.

We also consider what furniture brings culturally. A historical design may sit alongside local craftsmanship or contemporary art, each contributing to the identity of the space. These relationships should feel considered and reward closer attention. Their arrangement can express an intention, suggest how a room might be used and influence how people approach one another. Through its presence and placement, furniture helps shape behaviour and the tone of conversations within a room.

The value of a long life

The decision to invest in original furniture is also a decision about time. We are choosing something whose value we expect to sustain through use.

Quality of construction matters, as do maintenance and repair. A piece that can be reupholstered or restored has the potential to serve several generations. Its ability to adapt to different settings extends that possibility.

But longevity also depends on affection. People keep objects that work well for them and become meaningful in their lives. A chair may be remembered through the person who used it. A table may become inseparable from the gatherings around it. The design acquires a personal history alongside its cultural one.

This gives permanence a practical meaning. It requires thoughtful selection and continued care. The owner becomes part of the object’s future.

Fifty years of iMaestri demonstrates the value of keeping design knowledge in circulation. These pieces remain available to be used, examined and understood, allowing successive generations to learn from decisions made before them.

For us, understanding history improves the quality of the questions we ask today. It makes us more attentive to context, more informed about materials and more responsible for what we introduce into the world. That is a sound basis for creating work that others may one day choose to keep.