Cassina 3to9 table lamp by Neri&Hu: ivory fabric on a bronze wire frame, light diffused like a paper kite brought indoors. Photograph courtesy Cassina / Neri&Hu.
The kite stays in the room.
Neri&Hu, the Shanghai practice of Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu, designed 3to9 for Italian house Cassina as a modular lighting system launched in 2024 and kept in circulation through Milan Design Week 2025. The name nods to Chinese kite culture. In classical Chinese a kite was a zhiyuan, a paper bird of prey used first for messages, later for spring play around Qingming. Neri&Hu wrap translucent fabric around a thin metal wire frame the way a kite-maker stretches skin over bamboo, then let Cassina’s optics push even light through the weave. Pendant, wall, floor, and table versions share two shade lengths, one twice the other, plus a connector so you can build a quiet constellation instead of buying a single chandelier statement.
“Inspired by the structure of a kite and its auspicious associations, Neri&Hu have created a lighting collection featuring the craftsmanship of kite-making.”
Neri&Hu, project note on the Cassina 3to9 collection
Shanghai Memory, Meda Manufacturing
Neri and Hu founded their interdisciplinary office in Shanghai in the mid-2000s (the practice dates the studio to 2006; their retail platform Design Republic opened in 2004). Both trained in California architecture before graduate work at Harvard and Princeton. The Cassina brief puts them in a Meda lineage that already carries Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand, and Gio Ponti. Their first Cassina chapter was Stay in 2020: freestanding bedroom storage on stout wooden platforms, named for how objects, and people, stay put when the world feels unstable. 3to9 is the lighter sequel. Where Stay grounded the room, the lamps float the Chinese reference into industrial production you can specify for a diaspora flat without commissioning a one-off atelier piece.
Frames come in clear steel or bronze. Fabric reads ivory or soft rose in current Cassina assemblies. The light section is kept deliberately thin so the glow sits on the textile rather than blasting the ceiling. For a Hong Kong Mid-Levels dining table or a Vancouver condo corner, the useful promise is modular honesty: start with one wall module, add a pendant pair later, keep the language consistent.
This is the useful next move after Banquet pieces that already follow Neri&Hu through architecture: the terracotta street front at Mandarin Oriental The Landmark, the courtyard logic in Designing a Contemporary Courtyard House, and the material restraint argued in The New Asian Minimalism. 3to9 is the object you can actually ship home.
How to Live With It
Sit a table version where a paper lantern would feel too folkloric and a crystal drop would feel too hotel. Hang a suspension pair over a rectangular dining table so the two lengths read as rhythm, not mismatch. Use a wall module in a corridor that needs warmth without art clutter. Confirm finishes and lead times with an authorised Cassina dealer; rates move with configuration, and the brand’s classics sit in the same showroom as the contemporary line.
In Hong Kong, Atelier A+ carries Cassina at G/F Wilson House, 19-27 Wyndham Street, Central (+852 2960 0071). Singapore buyers often start at W. Atelier on Henderson Road; Tokyo has Cassina ixc. in Aoyama; Shanghai has long shown the brand inside design districts such as MIFA 1862. Ask specifically for 3to9 rather than assuming every floor sample includes the newest lighting. Pair a lamp visit with Why Design Miami Basel Matters to Asian Collectors if you are building a room that mixes collectible design with daily-use industrial pieces.
Neri and Hu also steer Stellar Works as creative directors, and their architecture already shapes hotels and houses across Asia. 3to9 is smaller and more intimate: Chinese spring memory filtered through Italian wire, sized for the rooms diaspora families actually light after dinner. Hang one. Watch the fabric take the glow. Then decide whether the next module belongs over the table or beside the bed.
Continue with A Manor Beside Tokyo Station for André Fu’s residential hotel language, or return to The New Asian Minimalism when the lamp is one line in a larger house brief.
