Mythica

RHO FIERA
Pav 5, Booth L11 - M06
Rho Fiera, Milano
9:30 am - 6:30 pm

Mythica is the collection that Visionnaire presents during the Salone Del Mobile Milano in June. It is also the 60 years anniversary celebration of the maisons' participation of the Salone Del Mobile since June 1961.

The Visionnaire booth is a house-sanctuary, narrated through six thematic chapters: the Winter Garden, Atrium, Convivium, Day-time Oasis, Alcova and the Boudoir, symbolic places that prompt intense emotions and associative memories through the experience of living. 

A “mythical” ode to our most intimate and powerful everyday rituals, narrated by the brand’s long-term designers, - Alessandro La Spada, Mauro Lipparini, Draga&Aurel, m2atelier - and new collaborations - Studiopepe and Marta Naddeo - with whom it has been possible to imagine the home as a simulacrum of our personal histories.

 WINTER GARDEN

This place is an extension between inside and outside, in which human life reaches out to botanical life. The winter garden was created for the purpose of bringing nature inside to protect it from cold climates, so it implies love and respect for the natural universe. Human beings have the need to interrupt the rhythm of artifice and technique inside their habitat spaces, to restore the contact with natural life, this almost forgotten sense of mutual belonging that existed before the discovery of shelter.

The winter garden marks the beginning and end of the exhibition pathway inside Visionnaire’s pavilion, welcoming and greeting visitors like a warm embrace. Its semicircular form, in fact, is like a window to the outside world, as interpreted by the sophisticated gaze of Marco Bonelli and Marijana Radovic, alias m2atelier, the creators of the Caprice collection that was presented for the first time 2021.

An escape from monotony and boredom, a caprice of the heart – and above all of the imagination – Caprice is a collection that reminds us of how important it is to live life with passion and a bit of lighthearted nonchalance. The capsule responds to the needs of many different places and moments in life, entering indoor and outdoor spaces with the same easy versatility, producing a sense of home whose essential objective is always the same: comfort.

ATRIUM 

The atrium is the entrance to the dwelling, the access point of our inner world, the boundary between public and private life. Its value is very high, because it is the first place we encounter along the pathway of dwelling. The entrance is a filter between two worlds, where we choose whether to welcome or reject what arrives from outside. A space of transit and waiting, it creates vivid expectations about what lies beyond.

This is the space set aside for the poetics of Draga&Aurel, who have developed an intense partnership with the brand under the banner of art-design, and the pursuit of uniqueness combined with reproducibility. The new collection continues along the stylistic lines that began in 2020. The designers look to the greatest exponents of “futuristic” style: in their creations, straight and stylized lines, geometric and aerodynamic shapes are translated into architectural objects, looking forward to the world of tomorrow.

The atrium is a space in which time seems to stand still, where the works by the artists – in elegant dialogue – interrupt the rhythm of everyday life in order to be contemplated, granting us a moment of devout, thoughtful suspension.

The Zoe chairs, with or without armrests, echo the totemic forms and precious details of the Amos table. Sputnik-Oxy, an evolution of the Sputnik lighting system, features rhomboid metal parts with a shiny gold finish that bring to mind the futuristic virtuosity of Paco Rabanne’s apparel. 

CONVIVIUM

The kitchen is one of the most important places in the home. This room, superficially assigned to the realm of technical and functional performance, has a far nobler purpose: a place to take care of ourselves and others, through sharing and convivial pleasures. The existence of a convivial gathering place implies community – not just in terms of meals, but as a way of creating profound, authentic contact.

The new Villa d’Este kitchen by Mauro Lipparini celebrates the aggregative dimension of living, not only within the family group but also in relation with the outside world, as a gesture of contamination and transformation, in the space that is the symbol of metamorphosis par excellence. Lipparini’s project pays homage with its name to Villa d’Este, a place of culture, pleasure, wellbeing and happiness. An Italian asset admired all over the world, a viaticum of imagination and daring; a vision of the future stemming from a fervid, eternal architectural imagination.

The architect sees Villa d’Este as a true “dry/show kitchen,” a natural haven for the aspirations of interior design. The everyday dimension takes on prestige, elegance and beauty, in the most technological area of the home, a space to enjoy in an engaging, serendipitous way. A kitchen that embodies the happiness of sharing flavors, elegance and ample space, the pleasure of devoting time to the most complete convivial bliss, in the ritual acts of food preparation, where taste and creativity are combined. The kitchen thus becomes an extension of ourselves, the beating heart of the home, a domestic temple where we create alchemical combinations of ingredients and people for the pleasure of the senses, through concrete gestures, for a “new renaissance” of the home.

A new collaboration with Marta Naddeo, creator of the lighting collection Nuages, Zyklus, Solveig and Syrenes. In this collection, the typical craftsmanship of Venetian blown glass has been applied to a piece with a soft, rounded form. The lighting fixtures come in three sizes, and with different finishes: straight ribbing for the smaller items, “baloton” glass for the pieces of medium size, and with twisted ribbing for the large creations. Very striking reflection effects are created thanks to the combination of the texture of the glass, the light and the metal finish.

The Valiant dining table features pure geometric lines, but with great visual impact thanks to the choice of finishes that can be combined in various ways. The project relies on natural materials and finishes of refined beauty: ziricote, a wood with a seductive, delicate texture, meets and blends with Michelangelo quartzite, in boldly elegant pastel tones.

DAY-TIME OASIS

Alessandro La Spada is one of the protagonists of Mythica and of the chapter devoted to the heart of domestic life: the living/dining area. Places where the family gathers, marked by functional versatility with an accent on relaxation, hospitality and welcome. La Spada presents the Babylon Rack upholstered furniture system, created in 2021 as a modular work of mini-architecture, in which there are many functional features for study, work and rest. Activities that in recent years have increasingly modified the character of domestic spaces, facing us with a new challenge: to formulate every room as a complete, independent dwelling in its own right.

For Mythica, La Spada has created a new approach to upholstered furnishings, based on a modular design that improves the possibilities for groupings.
In the life of the ancient Romans, hosts set out triclinia in their abodes, where guests would stretch out two or three at a time. This concept of sharing and grouping of upholstered pieces to maximize the experience of socializing is a key reference point for the design of Foster, whose regular yet enveloping geometric lines – marked by ribbed textures for the outer shells of the backs – enhance softness and comfort for prolonged relaxation.

ALCOVE

“Alcove” comes from the Arabic word al-qubba, which literally means “dome,” and has its semantic roots in Arab architecture, where sleeping quarters – which were in fact topped by domes – often extended into an adjoining space set aside for personal care. The alcove is not simply a place for resting: it also has an elusively voluptuous meaning. It is the “innermost chamber,” the place of secret discoveries.

This chapter presents the Aubade bed by Alessandro La Spada, which like a horizontal set depicting sunrise, is a composition that alternates full and empty volumes, triggering an effect of perspective in the materiality by the material essence of lighted backdrops in Patagonia marble. A true refuge for body and mind, in which to rest and retreat into a dream dimension of total relaxation.

In this project by Alessandro La Spada, the wardrobe, usually relegated to the most private zones of the house, becomes an element of display, with the insertion of a semicircular niche between its modules. The new Leonardo wardrobe, like a ribbed showcase, features an organically shaped sculpture in Pink Portogallo marble. The cabinet is thus transformed from a storage unit to a display case.

All the nighttime zones are on view together with a wellness area: Aubade is paired with the bathroom unit and the new Leonardo wardrobe, the Ultrasound project by La Spada is matched with the Kobol wellness unit, and the Bastian bedroom by Mauro Lipparini extends across the entire upholstered line, from the bed to the new Bastian Lounge sofa. This updated interpretation of the iconic sofa stands out for its exceptional comfort, ready to become a true protagonist of wellbeing in any habitat.

BOUDOIR

The term boudoir came from the French word “bouder”, meaning “to pout, to sulk,” so the boudoir is literally a place of retreat, away from others, in bashful solitude. In history, especially from the 18th century onward, this space became a proper lady’s parlor in which to converse and to indulge in personal care, though it was also a secret refuge of sensuality.

It suggests a setting of profound intimacy and total privacy, for true rituals of beauty, grooming and care for the body, in which we are free to indulge our own sensibilities, revealed in the faculty of the spirit to perceive external objects through the senses. The boudoir is indeed a place of sense and sensualism, either as erotic fact or as a manifestation of taste and aesthetics.

This private place becomes the realm of the designers of Studiopepe, Arianna Lelli Mami and Chiara Di Pinto, and hosts a capsule collection as a preview of the larger “empire of the senses” project.

The collection explores the five senses, starting with a few key concepts. The concept of beauty as something precious, to be discovered and revealed. A reticence of beauty that stimulates curiosity and invites discovery. Another concept is symbolism, which is always linked to sensuality, charged with many ancestral symbols over time and reinterpreted here in a contemporary way.
Then comes craftsmanship, considered in terms of the value of know-how. For this capsule collection excellent forms of Italian expertise have been called into play, in the fields of glassmaking and mirror etching. The two pieces on view are the Blanche mirror and the Parade lighting system.

The Blanche mirror bears a symbolic image etched on its surface by hand, concealed by a curtain in thin leather strips. To see it and then to see your reflection, the fringe has be gently moved, like a caress, an act of kindness but also of sensory pleasure, implying the use of both sight and touch.

The Parade system of suspension lamps, on the other hand, is an installation of parts in molded glass that resemble the forms of many tongues of different sizes. Taste is the sense in charge of our experience of flavors. It is the metaphor, in this case, of an all-encompassing sensory experience, as taste and smell are closely interrelated; they are our oldest senses, the first to develop in human beings. Olfactory and gustatory stimuli can generate long-lasting associative memories, such as smells or tastes that evoke images of events, places or people long dormant in memory.

Fashion enters design with the Aries armchair by Draga & Aurel, which combines minimal chic style, geometric effects and attention to detail, in a tribute to the Space Age experiments of André Courrèges and Pierre Cardin.