NEB Satellite Event at Materiatek
Sonian is a Brussels-based cooperative working exclusively with wood from the Sonian Forest, a 5,000-hectare peri-urban ecosystem and UNESCO World Heritage site. Founded in 2019, Sonian aims to relocalise the transformation of this exceptional forest resource by working closely with forest managers, sawmills and craftspeople, ensuring a fully local and sustainable value chain.
While a significant part of this wood is currently exported, Sonian develops an alternative model that reintegrates production locally for architecture, construction and design. The cooperative promotes the ecological, cultural and material value of the Sonian Forest, with a strong focus on biodiversity, selective forestry and responsible use of resources.
Forest to Form Workshop :The session combines an introduction to the challenges and opportunities of local wood valorisation with a hands-on experience working directly with beech wood from the Sonian Forest.
Participants will be guided through the making of a simple object (such as a solid beech cutting board), allowing them to discover the material’s qualities through direct fabrication. This format, already tested in previous public workshops, offers both a pedagogical and sensory approach to local wood and its potential in contemporary design.
✨ Each participant will leave with a personal set of handcrafted samples.
📅 June 12 | 13:30 – 20:00
🗣️ Event will be held in English
📍 Materiatek, Rue van Malder 24 and Sonian, Rue Heyvaert 140, 1080 Brussels
🎟️ Tickets available on our website (link in bio)
🚲 Bike parking available
Last chance to see our FORE·S·T Exhibition
After the true celebration of the new gallery section of Corpus for the FORE·S·T exhibition, we are approaching the end of our currating time there and must free the space for upcoming events.
In this context, we invite you to enjoy the few days left to experience the wooden and written atmosphere of FORE·S·T.
End of the exhibition on thursday 6th May @corpus.bookshop
83, rue A. Diderich.
Photo credit: Nathan Magnin, Lilou Wolff
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#SonianBrussels #SonianWood #BespokeService #Craftsmanship #ContemporaryDesign #SustainableFurniture #LocallySourced #SonianForest #Woodworking #GreenDesign #BelgiumDesign #ArtisanalFurniture #LocalMaterials #CollectibleDesign #DesignFurniture #BrusselsDesign
FORE·S·T EXPO RECAP
Three weeks ago, Corpus gallery section opened — Florence Marchal's new bookshop — and celebrated its first night with the vernissage of the FORE·S·T exhibition.
A blend of wood shaped by craft and pages shaped by thought.
Activated by people who shared the space between them.
It was a joy to welcome so many of you into this corner where woodwork met words. Thanks to everyone who came with curiosity, stayed for the stories, and left with a little sawdust on the soul.
Photo credit: Nathan Magnin, Lilou Wolff
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#SonianBrussels #SonianWood #BespokeService #Craftsmanship #ContemporaryDesign #SustainableFurniture #LocallySourced #SonianForest #Woodworking #GreenDesign #BelgiumDesign #ArtisanalFurniture #LocalMaterials #CollectibleDesign #DesignFurniture #brusselsdesign
FABRICE SAMYN
We are delighted to have the opportunity to showcase the work of Fabrice Samyn in our upcoming FORE-S-T exhibition at CORPUS.
Belgian interdisciplinary artist whose work unfolds at the intersection of painting, sculpture, installation and performance. Drawing from art history, philosophy and the natural sciences, his practice interrogates the ontological conditions that bind human and non-human forms of existence.
Exhibited works engage with materials transformed by animals and insects — beavers, xylophagous organisms — through processes that displace authorship and challenge the stability of form.
These collaborations foreground a field of relations in which agency is distributed, and where the artwork emerges as the site of negotiation between living systems, matter and time.
Within this expanded ecology, Samyn’s work articulates a critical reflection on temporality — not as a linear measure, but as a plurality of rhythms shaped by interspecies encounters. His practice thus opens a space in which cohabitation becomes both a material condition and a speculative horizon.
Photos by Fabrice Samyn
The Stool L18, designed by Bento Architecture, will be among the pieces presented during our upcomaing FORE·S·T exhibition.
Bento is an architectural practice that places material experimentation at the heart of its work. Their approach explores how living matter can challenge the sustainability of current production methods and reshape the way we inhabit our surroundings. Driven by this inquiry, Bento's architects seek to push beyond convention, bridging architecture, art and design through direct engagement with the materials themselves.
We invite you to discover the intriguing perspectives that emerge from the encounter between local hardwood and mycelium.
Photo by Nathan Magnin
NEW COLLABORATION
From scrap to bespoke. We are pleased to announce our latest collaboration with artist and designer Rikkert Paauw, presented as part of the inaugural exhibition FORE·S·T at CORPUS.
The new piece titled Librarian stands at the meeting point of two harvests. The first unfolds within Sonian's workshop, where every operation on Sonian Forest beech leaves behind offcuts and remnants. The second takes place on the streets of Brussels, among pieces of furniture abandoned on the pavement. Rikkert Paauw brings these two sources together and, through precise composition, reveals the narrative potential held within materials that would otherwise be overlooked.
The piece embodies a conviction we share: that every fragment of a noble material deserves a second life. Each element, whether a beech offcut from the workshop floor or a reclaimed drawer front, carries its own history into the assembly.
Come see Librarian at the opening of CORPUS on 15 April.
Material: Beechwood (Fagus sylvatica), PVC, marquetry, metal
Photo: Nathan Magnin
#SonianWood #RikkertPaauw #CORPUS #ContemporaryDesign #SustainableFurniture #LocallySourced #SonianForest #Woodworking #BelgiumDesign #ArtisanalFurniture #Gleaning #DesignFurniture #ForeST
NEW BOOKSHOP & GALLERY
In the heart of Forest, a long-imagined space finally opens its doors. Shaped and reshaped over time, it has become a bookshop-gallery unlike any other.
On one side, CORPUS features a curated selection of international publications on architecture, urbanism, landscape, design and applied arts, in dialogue with sociology, critical theory, philosophy, literature and ecology.
On the other, CORPUS is a gallery space hosting installations by artists and makers, student works, and book presentations.
For its inaugural exhibition, CORPUS has invited Sonian to present FORE·S·T, an exploration of our universe rooted in the wood of the Sonian Forest.
Enthusiasts, curious minds, experts, flâneurs: come discover Brussels' newest cultural destination. We look forward to welcoming you on 15 April for the gallery's opening.
Design & text by Florence Marchal
Photo credit: Nathan Magnin
IN THE WORKSHOP
Final stretch of crafting in our workshop, preparing the furniture for the opening of @corpus.bookshop and starting the selection of pieces to be shown at the FORE·S·T exhibition.
Design of the side table: Atelier365/Laura Greindl
Design of the chair: Lionel Jadot
Photo credit: Nathan Magnin
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#SonianBrussels #SonianWood #BespokeService #Craftsmanship #ContemporaryDesign #SustainableFurniture #LocallySourced #SonianForest #Woodworking #GreenDesign #BelgiumDesign #ArtisanalFurniture #LocalMaterials #CollectibleDesign #DesignFurniture #BrusselsDesign
FORE·S·T
On Wednesday 15 April, we are celebrating the opening of Corpus, a new bookshop presented by Florence Marchal, which will also host the vernissage of FORE·S·T, an exhibition curated by Sonian.
Corpus is a carefully curated bookshop specialising in architecture, design, craft, urbanism, landscape, fashion, visual culture and beyond: a new destination in Brussels for those who draw inspiration from the written word.
FORE·S·T traces the story of Sonian's woodwork from its origins in the forest to its final form crafted in our workshop. The show explores the journey through collaborations, the material, and the hands that shape it. It is a reflective tour showcasing the resources that quietly influence our everyday work.
Photo credit: Nathan Magnin
Illustration by Mateo Berhault
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#SonianBrussels #SonianWood #Exhibition #SustainableFurniture #LocallySourced #SonianForest #Woodworking #GreenDesign #BelgiumDesign #ArtisanalFurniture #LocalMaterials #DesignFurniture #BrusselsDesign #spaltedbeech #corpusbookshop #librairieindependante #design #architecture
FINE FLEUR
Sonian is part of the 2026 edition of Private Choice "Fine Fleur."
On show: a piece designed by Bento Architecture, crafted from mycelium and beech wood sourced in the Sonian Forest.
From 8 to 12 April at Le Grand Tour — 123, rue de Turenne, Paris 3e.
You are warmly invited to visit.
Photos: Théo Baulig
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#SonianBrussels #SonianWood #Exhibition #SustainableFurniture #LocallySourced #SonianForest #Woodworking #GreenDesign #ArtisanalFurniture #LocalMaterials #DesignFurniture #BrusselsDesign #galerie #design #architecture
Matter of sense for HORECA expo
16/11 - 19/11
La Gadoue and Cru are proposing a collective scenography for hospotality, with Sonian, 3 studio, Céline Proust, Ariane van Dietvoet, Grond studio, studio Part, Atelier 365, Hugh Roche Kelly
The collective of designers is ibterweaving there roots, extra ring local materials and turning them into a new vision of hospitality. They embody a symbiotic and collaborative approach to circular design, reviving natural materials that have been neglected and left aside.
#sustainabledesign #collectiveexhibition #horecaexpo
Arborescence – a poetic encounter between craft, material research, and sustainable design.
Inspired by the forms of trees, this console evokes organic growth and becoming. Its legs are made from a hemp-lime blend developed by @cru.brussels , hand-shaped and air-dried to reveal the raw, mineral beauty of the material. The top is crafted from heritage beech wood harvested from the Sonian Forest in Belgium and hand-finished by our artisans.
Part of the Curated by @atelier_lioneljadot show earlier this year at The Mix.
#Sonian #SustainableDesign #Craftsmanship #MaterialInnovation #Arborescence #sonianforest
