Sonian is a cooperative focusing on the use of local wood in architecture and design, harvesting local wood from the Sonian forest in Brussels, a woodworking studio transforming that produces for clients and other designers, and a design studio creating their own bespoke furniture.
The local trees they use have been cut down for safety, to develop the forest or to introduce other species in the face of climate change. The team processes the wood, distributes it, collaborates with designers and designs its own pieces in a circular manner.
Co-founders Benjamin Moncarey and Stephan Kampelmann have gathered around them a team of woodworkers and work with lumberjacks and sawmills, in a sustainable approach from the standing tree to the finished product.
The local wood of Sonian has a place of choice in From the ground up, as Augusta chose to exhibit three pieces made with their beech wood, reflecting the wide range of work of the brand.
Sonian and BC materials present their first joint design piece : a coffee table named Hors sol (above ground). Their collaboration was an obvious choice, both aesthetically and in terms of the local and sustainable values upheld by the two teams.
Designed by Lionel Jadot, the Inventaire chair is one of the emblematic elements of Fox, the food market located at the heart of Mix, the mega renovation project coordinated by Lionel Jadot in Brussels. For this re-edition of his chair, the designer chose to use wood from the Forêt de Soignes sourced by Sonian. The woodworking studio now produces a limited series of 299 copies of the chair in its Brussels workshop.
The System P4 shelving unit designed and made by Studio PART is another example
of high-end design made with Sonian’s local beech wood.