Notturno

Design as a story. The object as a metaphor, a means of expression, far removed from rigid serialisation. This is the vision of Gaetano Pesce who, after ‘Tramonto a New York’, designed for Cassina in the 1980’s and among the designer’s most beloved projects, returns to his adopted city as if just a few hours had passed by. Pesce presents us with a new fragment, ‘Notturno a New York’ – Night time in New York, a sofa-skyline enveloped by a starry sky. A serene moonlit night, perhaps during a sultry summer, that illuminates the skyscrapers of a metropolis that hasn’t yet fallen asleep.

Together with Gaetano Pesce, Cassina returns to its past, revisiting one of the icons of its archives and continues along the path of design based on research, on formal and technological experimentation. Because every project in the history of Cassina is a vibrant, dynamic idea that already contains the stimuli for its evolution.

Notturno a New York unites evocative and emotional force with precise structural functionality. The sofa comprises skyscraper elements that act as seats and armrests, assembled together using joints. The backrest represents a huge full moon, the part not facing the Earth, thus revealing an unexpected and mysterious vision of the dark side of the moon. The upholstery is in a tapestry-like fabric, replete with the smallest of details. A sophisticated weaving technique is used to produce 14,000 warp and weft stitches, generating extremely high definition images. The 3D nature of the skyscrapers is achieved thanks to a larger yarn, weaved together with the numerous coloured yarns. The structure of the sofa is composed of plywood and beech wood frames strapped together. The padding is in polyurethane foam and polyester wadding.