This Will Be the Place: Turn an Anniversary into a Question

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For its ninetieth anniversary in 2017, Cassina explored future living through This Will Be the Place and the related Cassina 9.0 installation. The book combined expert contributions with five photographic scenarios. The installation interpreted the project at Milan’s Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Both are treated here as one anniversary communication family.

Editorial interpretation: the anniversary gives the company a reason to convene a discussion, but the question makes that discussion useful beyond the company itself. Rather than simply asking people to admire longevity, the project can invite them to consider how everyday life might change. That creates a tension worth preserving. A future scenario needs enough detail to be imaginable, yet too much certainty can make a creative proposal sound like a forecast. The interesting role for the brand is to offer concrete possibilities for discussion while making clear which assumptions those possibilities depend on.

The creator and brand accounts establish the book, installation and their relationship. They do not establish that the imagined futures occurred, that visitors changed their behaviour or that the project generated incremental sales. This analysis did not inspect the complete book or attend the exhibition. It treats the scenarios as authored propositions rather than a representative study of future households. The transferable mechanism is a change of anniversary brief: move from recounting achievements to asking a question that the organisation has a credible reason to explore, then make alternative answers tangible enough for other people to examine.

Choose a question with consequences for the offer

A fictional workspace studio might ask how people would organise a shared room if different tasks needed the same space at different times. That question connects to the studio’s competence and can produce specific design choices. A vague question about the future of everything is less likely to yield a useful discussion. Define which decision the scenarios could inform and which matters remain outside the team’s expertise. The anniversary can supply attention, but it should not be the only reason the audience cares. A good question remains worth asking after the commemorative date has passed and the celebratory graphics have been removed.

Make the alternatives disagree in an intelligible way

Three attractive scenes are not necessarily three different scenarios. Identify the assumption that changes between them, such as whether a room is shared simultaneously, used in turns or frequently rearranged. Give each option consequences rather than making one obviously correct. Then ask what a person gains and gives up in each imagined situation. This turns a display into a discussion aid rather than a row of preferences. Avoid presenting invented household behaviours as research findings. The scenarios can help people articulate needs without claiming to predict how a population will live or which solution everyone should choose.

Carry the question across the formats

A publication and an installation can explore the same brief without repeating each other exactly. A text may explain assumptions; a spatial prototype may make a trade-off easier to notice. Plan what each format contributes and how an interested visitor can move between them. Keep the scenario labels and underlying assumptions consistent so that the translation does not quietly change the argument. Ask a reviewer to reconstruct the original question from either version. If the exhibition is memorable but its decision disappears, the experience may have become spectacle detached from the enquiry that justified it. The connection should survive the change in medium.

A small test for another brief

Proposed adaptation: create three original paper scenarios for a fictional shared workshop, each based on a different scheduling assumption. Present them first as short illustrated cards and then as simple tabletop layouts. Ask consenting adults to explain each trade-off and suggest information they would need before choosing. Clearly label the scenarios as invented discussion tools, not forecasts or tested room designs. Do not copy historical interiors, commission real construction or collect private household details. The exercise tests whether a future-facing question produces useful, distinguishable alternatives.

Record whether people can distinguish the assumptions, explain gains and losses and identify a useful next research question. Separate preference for a visual style from understanding of the trade-off. The prototype cannot validate a forecast or prove future demand.

Revise if every scenario is interchangeable, one is presented as inevitable or the experience hides the question behind decoration. An anniversary can open a conversation without pretending to know the answer in advance.

• Name the practical decision behind the future question.
• Change one consequential assumption across the scenarios.
• Preserve the question when translating cards into layouts.