Cassina USA Soho
151 Wooster Street
Tel: 212-228-8186
Designer: Piero Lissoni

Italian furniture maker Cassina—producer of storied designs from Le Corbusier and Wright to Gaetano Pesce and Philippe Starck—opened its new Soho showroom on May 16. Milan-based designer Piero Lissoni was in charge of the space, which makes the most of the existing structure. “The concept was easy—I only chose the color for the wall and the floor,” Lissoni told AN with a laugh. “The space had a good soul,” he added. “I wanted to save that special spirit. I cleaned up the columns and the fake decorations.” Maintaining the architectural skeleton, Lissoni primarily used glass and a dark gray palette that modulates the room’s light to create, as he said, “a light with a lot of personality.” The only major structural intervention was to change the position of one window, while on the inside, the team added a 13-foot-tall by 19-foot-long glass box—a box within the box of the loft’s original volume. He separates the inside from the outside with a corridor that effectively creates an interior facade, just beyond the doorway. Lissoni also designed a set of storefront display niches to exhibit Cassina’s new pieces each season. Part gallery and part loft apartment, the space is fittingly in keeping with Cassina’s classic yet ever-contemporary designs.