VISIONNAIRE IS FULL HOME DESIGN.
VISIONNAIRE IS BESPOKE LUXURY.
VISIONNAIRE IS LIFESTYLE.
VISIONNAIRE IS WELLBEING.
This is the philosophy that animates the brand founded by the parent company IPE, which today stands as a metaluxury manifesto in the Made in Italy interior design sector, within which it is recognised for its one-of-a-kind design capacity tailored to the desires of its customers. Since 2004, Visionnaire has created a distinctive style, characterised by lively experimentation with materials, unexpectedly balanced volumes and unmistakable motifs that celebrate the all-Italian origins of the maison. Thanks to the collaboration of a team of eclectic and visionary designers, both Italian and foreign, it is the ideal partner for bespoke proposals in residential and contract contexts, in the luxury hotel industry as well as in the yachting and aviation sectors.
ELEONORE CAVALLI, ART DIRECTOR, TOLD PLATFORM ABOUT THE EVOLUTION OF VISIONNAIRE.
‘Visionnaire is Wellbeing’ reads your mission statement. Visionnaire reads the concept of Wellbeing in many ways, you have also recently become a Benefit Society. What is your approach to this issue?
Eleonore Cavalli: Since December 2021 Visionnaire has become a Benefit Society, but we have been pursuing an ethical business model since the foundation of IPE in 1959. IPE, and therefore Visionnaire, aim in the exercise of its economic activity, to achieve one or more positive effects – or reduce negative effects – on people, the community and the environment. A community that we do not mean only as our workshops but that we extend to the entire national territory, fuelling a flywheel for the design system of high Italian craftsmanship.
So luxury can and should go hand in hand with an ethical and sustainability approach? How do you combine the sophistication and exclusivity of your products with a green production cycle?
E.C. The luxury of the content and values that Visionnaire pursues and proposes is applied within our ethical approach to production, which is based on the responsible use of materials, the technological research that the company pursues with commitment, and the investments in streamlining the production chain. In 2019, Visionnaire obtained the FSC® Forest Stewardship council® C147146 and PEFCTM Programme for Endorsement of Forest Certification certifications, committing to guide its customers towards responsible forestry management and the desire to ensure that the woods used come from legal felling and certified supply chains. This year 57% of Visionnaire’s stand at the Salone del Mobile was recycled. We have a regeneration book with a selection of recycled and recyclable materials that continues to be renewed. From 2019, we will also zero the carbon footprint of all impacts of SDM trade fair events and showrooms as well as specific projects, such as NFT, by financing redevelopment and reforestation projects with Reteclima. We have been working on calculating the general carbon footprint of the entire handicraft and production chain, a calculation that has taken us two years, but at the end of which we can attest that the company is working in such a way that in the coming years our impact will be completely neutralised. Visionnaire has also been ISO 9001 certified since 2011, guaranteeing compliance with quality management standards, as part of a broader project of development and enhancement of Italian know-how, which is based on the choice of manufacturing entirely in Italy, for sixty years. Well-being and sustainability also translate into the choice of innovative high-performance fabrics and leathers, which, through recycling logic and low-impact production processes, represent a new technological and sustainable goal. All this translates into Re-Generation, a book entirely dedicated to those fabrics and leathers that respect criteria of low environmental impact. In this special selection of materials, every single fabric is accompanied by a technical data sheet containing details on composition, spinning, weaving, cultivation systems and traceability that allows us to know the life cycle of the product. Some new fabrics have been included
this year, such as Paddington, an ecological fur made from recycled pet and itself recyclable.
Visionnaire is much more than a company in the Made in Italy interior design sector because, as we have seen, it proposes integral visions and projects. You have recently launched one of these projects, the new real estate division with the VOLARE DUBAI project. What is it about?
E.C. ‘Volare’ is not only a collection, but, as you anticipate, an integral architecture and interior design project. We decided to inaugurate Visionnaire’s new 2023 season with this unique project presented during the press conference of the 61st edition of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan. The name refers to that of the Developer we are working with, but it is also the title of the new collection, a naming we wanted to borrow from Modugno’s song because for us ‘Volare’ means giving space to the imagination, flying high with a prospective look, feeding on visions and being visionary. Volare is an ambitious project, never presented for its scope by anyone in our industry. The concept we presented in the collection is the same as that applied to the Volare project in Dubai, a 2000 square metre villa that Visionnaire, together with designer Alessandro La Spada, has designed on the beach inside the Bulgari Compound in Dubai and which will be delivered in the autumn of 2024. Volare embodies one of the values closest to our hearts: the yugen, which in Japanese thought expresses a profound and mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe, in which one can find one’s place and feel completely part of the space in which one lives, to the point of recognising oneself in it. Yugen reminds us that we can live in harmony with the beauty of our surroundings, the space of our home. A home that for Visionnaire continues to take on the meaning of a place of happiness, a theatre of daily beauty and a sanctuary for our intimate rituals.
