Visionnaire & the path towards a lower impact

Visionnaire, which stands today as a Meta-Luxury manifesto, is based on the values of knowledge and beauty. This luxury of contents and values finds application in the responsible use of materials, in a technological research that the company carries out with commitment, in investments to make the production chain more efficient and the quality of life of its artisans. The convergence between the well-being of the individual and the entire ecosystem that hosts it arises at the center of Visionnaire’s reflection at the dawn of a new decade of necessary environmental and social awareness.

Benefit Company

As of December 2021 Visionnaire, founded by the parent company IPE, has become a Benefit Company, defining its business approach by promoting positive and essential values within the community. Benefit companies are for-profit organizations, but also have the objective by bringing shared benefits to the ecosystem in which they operate, guide and drive innovation through their activities. In its business practices, IPE-Visionnaire intends to pursue one or more positive effects – or reduce negative effects – in regard to people, communities, territories and environment, cultural and social assets and activities, institutions and associations, as well as other stakeholders. These factors are an important part of the company’s mission: the objectives of common benefits that are pursued inside business practices in an integrated way, inserted within the company’s Statute for alignment and in the medium and long term protect this corporate determination.

Visionnaire Pavilion | Salone del Mobile.Milan 2023

On the occasion of the next Salone del Mobile.Milano, Visionnaire presents Volare, a new housing proposal designed to tell a real domestic philosophy and a sartorial attitude to the creation of unique projects. Volare is not simply the development of a new collection of products, but a design manifesto of the contemporary home, a centrifugal thought that starts from the content to outline the container, from the individual to the space. The stand was created following low environmental impact logics, recovering and thus giving new life to some portions of the stand from the previous edition. More specifically, the portals and partitions in recycled glass, ceramic floors and completely recycled parquet have been preserved. Materials that otherwise would have been lost have here found a new interpretation and a new role for the Volare setting. Particular attention was also paid to materials selected from direct industrial recycling, which on the stand represent 40% of the materials used.

Carbon Neutrality

Through a path of climate responsibility, the brand has neutralized the emissions generated for the Volare installation present at Rho Fiera, the immersive installation “The empire of the senses” in the Wunderkammer inserted inside its flagship store in Piazza Cavour 3, the press conference and party events of every night of the Design Week.

The neutralization process for the various events linked to the Salone del Mobile took place in two main phases: a first of calculation of the carbon footprint, followed by a second of compensation.

The credits generated will go to support a forest conservation project in Brazil, «The Envira Amazonia Project», in the state of Acre, located in the northwestern section of the country. It is a REDD+ initiative validated and verified according to VCS and certified CCB standard.

This forest conservation project, which is spread over an area of over 200,000 hectares, has various socio-economic and environmental benefits. It will reduce 12.5 million tons of CO2, mitigate climate change, conserve habitat for endemic bird species and threatened tree species, and improve local water quality. On the socio-economic front, it allows the creation of alternative sources of income and job opportunities, agricultural extension training, social projects and programs for the commercialization of the collection, transport and sale of açaí, rubber and medicinal plants.

Visionnaire is followed in this path by Rete Clima, an organization that promotes Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), sustainability and decarbonization actions, offering advice to organizations sensitive to environmental issues.

Re-Generation: leathers and performing fabrics

Wellness and sustainability also translate into the choice of innovative performing fabrics and leathers through recycling logics and a low impact production process, representing a new technological and sustainable milestone. Thus translating into the Re-Generation project, a book entirely dedicated to those fabrics and leathers that meet low environmental impact criteria. In this special selection of materials, each individual fabric is accompanied by a technical data sheet containing details on composition, spinning, weaving, cultivation systems and traceability which allows us to understand the life cycle of the product. Among these new fabrics, Paddington, an ecological fur obtained from recycled pet which is in turn recyclable. It is previewed at the next Salone del Mobile.Milano on the Shibari armchairs by Studiopepe.

Padding made with innovative processes

The brand’s commitment to a more sustainable production development translates into the research for padding made with alternative and less harmful processes for our planet. 

The new foams are obtained through the use of a new special polyol, which is synthesized using carbon dioxide. It is in fact an innovative raw material for the production of high quality flexible polyurethane foams. Thanks to it, carbon dioxide is brought back into the production chain, thus allowing to reduce the use of fossil raw materials such as oil, while respecting and protecting the environment. These new foams are characterized by excellent breathability and low permanent deformation, two essential elements in the creation of a new seat. They also have physical-mechanical characteristics equivalent to conventional foams.

Visionnaire introduced these new paddings in one of its iconic seats, the Ca’ Foscari sofa, by Alessandro La Spada. For its upholstery, a fabric with highly performing characteristics was selected and belonging to the Re-Generation sample book, a research project of the brand in which only those materials that respect characteristics of low environmental impact are inserted and selected. The Ca’ Foscari sofa is also the winner of the Archiproducts Design Awards 2022 in the Sustainability category.

Leathers with innovative properties

Leather tanning is one of the most ancient forms of recycling, inserting itself within a process of production that goes from the management of cattle farms to the creation of products intended for the consumer. Leather that would otherwise be discarded as a by-product and disposed of, generating a high rate of global pollution, thus finds use in other manufacturing processes. The skin enters again in this cycle in which the processing waste of the tanning process becomes essential for further productive applications. One of this leathers is the Eco-skin which is a regenerated product obtained from the treatment of waste, reduced to powder and subsequently recomposed until it reaches 2 mm of thickness.

Visionnaire continues with the research on leathers processed without the use of metal, choosing a new and innovative leather - Living - of bovine origin and made thanks to an accurate metal-free and biodegradable biological tanning process according to the UNI EN 15987 standard. It was chosen for upholster the Egoiste chaise-longue by Alessandro La Spada, the rigid shell recalls the shape of a shell with enveloping, organic and extremely ergonomic lines. Egoiste is in fact designed to be a seat that welcomes and supports the shapes of the body, inviting the person to a moment of intimate well-being.

FSC™ C147146 & PEFC

In the second value - “Nature” - included in its “Decàlogo”, Visionnaire declares: “the desire to protect the natural heritage takes the form of an awareness that informs - and directs - our cultural vision, now sensitized towards design behaviors that , from the selection of materials to the last of the processes envisaged in the manufacturing cycles, take on the value of theoretical and practical gestures useful for expressing a precise, heartfelt civil commitment”

In 2019 Visionnaire obtained the FSC™ C147146 Forest Stewardship council™ and PEFC Program for Endorsement of Forest Certification, which demonstrates its commitment to achieving the global objective of guiding the market towards responsible forest management and the will to ensure that woods used come from legal cuts and from certified supply chains.

Starting this year, the brand offers a selection of products that will be made exclusively with FSC™ C147146 certified woods, including the Aurora console, the Ruben low table and the Jet Plane mirror by Steve Leung, Marty console and low table by Marco Piva. Visionnaire therefore continues in its commitment to safeguard our natural heritage, through increasingly direct and aware choices, thus directing its cultural vision. Also thanks to the decision to express the company’s strategic orientation through the declarations of intent contained in the Decàlogo, the brand has been able to outline its course: the idea of products that enclose a concept of absolute quality and a responsible commitment towards the environment.

Visionnaire has also been ISO 9001 certified since 2011, as a guarantee of compliance with quality management standards, in a broader project of development and enhancement of Italian know-how, which is based on the choice to make productions entirely in Italy, for sixty years.

Fossil Stone: millennial wood

Millennial woods of extraordinary beauty, extracted from the heart of the earth, to offer a rare and precious material, characterized by infinite shades that are always different, like the nature itself that generated them. These are woods from submerged forests that have remained wrapped and protected under layers of clay that nature has been able to preserve for centuries, to make them resurface today in new and unprecedented beauty. 

The brand uses this unprecedented material for some of its new creations such as the low Drusilla sideboard designed by Fabio Bonfà - characterized by the juxtaposition of the natural materials it is made of: marble, fossil wood and metal - and for Villa D’Este designed by Mauro Lipparini which celebrates the aggregative dimension of living, not only within one’s own family group, but also towards the outside world as a gesture of contamination and transformation, in the symbol space par excellence of metamorphosis. Everyday life is enriched with prestige and elegance in the most technological area of the house, thanks to the choice of refined materials such as Fossil Stone and the antique wavy Calacatta marble, characterized by multiple veins.

Marbles: manufacturing techniques and technological processes

The Kerwan dininig table, design Alessandro La Spada, stands out also for another special characteristic, which is the curvature of the marble legs obtained from a slab by exploiting the elastic capability of the stone, and not cut from a block, avoiding a substantial waste of material.

For the brand, the marble represents a fundamental natural element in its creations and it is precisely for this reason that it is constantly committed to researching new technologies to enhance this wonderful material. Visionnaire uses some new processing techniques which, by enhancing the natural veins of the stone, guarantee unprecedented and extremely natural results, such as the one called “Vital Lymph”, which through the micro-relief of the thinner veins makes the stone like a living organism. These techniques can be applied on marbles that have certain metamorphic properties and which, depending on their appearance, define the very name of the processing: Sea Waves, vein enhancement technique for Confusion Dark marble; Snakeskin, technique a micro-relief and wavy surface for Fior di Bosco marble, as well as Crocodile skin for Port Laurent marble; and Galuchat, double engraving technique and micro-relief for Black and Gold marble.

On the experimentation front Visionnaire uses the Azerocare process for some of its products. It is a unique process that guarantees permanent protection - with polished finish - of marbles from stains and corrosion caused by the contact of the surfaces with acidic foods and organic substances, without altering the colors, the tactile perception and the specific properties of natural stone. This process, makes the surfaces non-permeable, avoiding the proliferation of bacteria and also making them simple to clean. This treatment was used for the first time on the Kobol wellness unit realized with the ethereal texture of Dover White marble, on the Leonardo wellness unit that was enhanced by the expressive power of the Dalmata marble; and finally, the Kerwan dining table made with Black&Gold marble.

The Cameron table, born from the design of Alessandro La Spada, has its sculptural base as the protagonist: obtained from the combination of two specular blocks of marble, which therefore allow for no material waste. Through this particular processing of block marble it is possible to obtain two perfectly symmetrical bases.
The fullness of the stone and the void - underlined by a curved material subtraction and by a metal surface that covers it - coexist in the solid.

PMMA: “first-second” material

On the experimentation front, Visionnaire decides to use a regenerated material to create a new family of lights. PMMA, a special “secondary” raw material, which thanks to various stages is given a new life and a new purpose.

Lucente by Gupica takes inspiration from the world of gemology, investigates the behavior of light and the particular refractions it creates when it meets the faceted and symmetrical surfaces of the stone, causing suggestive luminous and kaleidoscopic effects. The opaque LED light source, passing through the stones, produces diffused lighting, enhancing its transparencies and colours, made by hand, with a particular gradient appearance. In the suspension composition, the individual elements are connected to each other through a metal chain that recalls a precious jewel represented on a large scale, giving the product an imaginative aspect.