Sharp brutalist volumes and organic shapes collide in NM3’s out-of-this-world collaboration with Visionnaire

Founded in 2020 by architects Francesco Zorzi and Nicolò Ornaghi and photographer Delfino Sisto Legnani, the Milan-based brand NM3 is a project grounded in radical essentialism.

Working exclusively with a single material, steel, the trio produce objects as severely pared back as flat, rolled sheets of metal will allow. A shelving system, for instance, is reduced to little more than a grid of reflective metal planes. It is therefore somewhat surprising to learn of the breadth of references behind their first collection with Visionnaire, the luxury Italian furniture brand founded by the Cavalli family in 2004 and known for its opulent, materially driven maximalism.

‘NM3 is based on extreme minimalism,' says Zorzi. ‘But in this case, we worked in an entirely different direction. Formally, we were looking at very different worlds, such as aeronautical design, late Renaissance sculpture, and the modernist architecture of John Lautner.'

Given those shared points of reference, it makes sense that the collaboration was steeped in a mutual appetite for art and culture. Visionnaire art director Eleonore Cavalli first encountered NM3's founders at Artissima, the Turin-based autumn art fair that runs concurrently with the electronic music festival C2C, staged within the halls of the former Fiat plant. ‘We share an enormous passion for electronic music and contemporary art,' says Cavalli, who was drawn to NM3 for the purity of their forms. ‘Their pieces remind me of 1960s American minimalism, artists like Donald Judd and Dan Flavin.'

For NM3, interpreting Visionnaire's visual language – known for its lavish use of precious materials, often paired with boldly expressive, almost theatrical forms – proved a welcome challenge. ‘Their material palette is much broader and far more complex,' Zorzi admits. ‘But it was refreshing to finally work with new materials and new aesthetic codes.'

The outcome walks a careful line between the two worlds, as Visionnaire's sensual richness is filtered through NM3's restraint. Comprising nine pieces that combine glass, stone, wood and metal, the capsule collection includes a coffee table formed from solid blocks of Moltrasio stone, upon which an asymmetrical slab of cotissi glass has been gingerly placed. ‘Cotissi are leftover scraps from glass production. When furnaces are cleaned, these residues remain as thick drops or blocks of glass,' explains Zorzi. ‘Here, they were fused into a slab with a broken, irregular profile.'

A bed, meanwhile, sits on a base of textured Villanova stone blocks, supporting a Macassar ebony platform in a rich chocolate brown. ‘We often joke that it belongs to an evil character in a James Bond film,' says Zorzi, noting that it could just as easily sit on the set of Nocturnal Animals, the Tom Ford-directed film partly staged within a brutalist-style home.

Made from an extremely lightweight aluminium structure, the chaise longue, ‘Blob', has an undulating profile that appears at once organic and algorithmically generated. ‘We began with a two-dimensional sheet and, through design and drawing, it evolved into a three-dimensional shell,' says Zorzi. ‘The process is identical to our usual approach, but the formal expression is different. It's alien, almost spaceship-like.'

The collaboration also gave NM3 access to a level of craft expertise they had not previously encountered. ‘We've never worked with anyone capable of this degree of detail and precision, while also being able to fully understand our design, and translate it into production so effectively,' says Zorzi, who refined the collection over the course of a year alongside Visionnaire's technical and production teams. ‘The dialogue was stimulating and genuinely beautiful.'

Visionnaire's network of craftspeople, formed of independent and highly specialised ateliers across Italy, has been actively nurtured since the 1950s, when Carlo, Pompeo and Vittorio Cavalli founded IPE, the brand's predecessor, in Bologna. This strategy has enabled Visionnaire to expand far beyond upholstered furniture, encompassing bathroom systems, storage and kitchens in a wide spectrum of materials and styles.

The collection will launch at 10 Corso Como for Milan Design Week, while Visionnaire will also present at Salone del Mobile and its Piazza Cavour showroom, where it will unveil a collection with Marc Ange, alongside a curated section titled ‘Wunderkammer'. The latter will take the form of a listening room and will host a reissue of 1970s archival pieces by Vittorio Varo. The momentum follows a major investment in 2024, which marked a turning point for the then-20-year-old brand. It enabled Visionnaire to overhaul its Milan flagship, plan new global outposts and expand its production capabilities. ‘I hope Visionnaire will always remain disruptive,' says Cavalli. ‘Our design language should never stand still.'

nm3.xyz, visionnaire-home.com