In Brianza, the Panzeri family decided to take bold steps that led to decades of stories and transformations, and through the process of collecting artisanal and industrial techniques created a heritage for the company. Panzeri sets themselves apart by their ability to express experiences, needs, aesthetics, at any time: a legacy has never been dispersed over the years. This cultural and industrial process produces a product with a specific moral purpose in this case to distribute widespread beauty and technology. The sum of these methodological premises leads to the constituent goals of the company, written in the founder’s will and still alive in the eyes of his heirs and their collaborators:

Panzeri é solo quello che si vede,
nient’altro che luce.

Panzeri is only what you see, nothing but light.

Design Philosophy

The ultimate lighting design for any house is a play of light and shadows, lights where they’re needed, and faint light where they’re not; this means creating an environment with ups and downs, not a monotony of whole, diffused light. When designing products for Panzeri, Enzo Panzeri uses the philosophy that the product should almost not be there if they don’t add to a space. This process is developed year after year, being an implementation of what was there while adapting to changes and identifying them in the connective fabric of the factory. Panzeri still do everything in house, from laser cutting, metal finishing and painting, to assembly, allowing them to have a considerable advantage, as this allows them to achieve the highest degree of perfection.

Materials

Light is undoubtedly a raw material, the most essential thing, the most evanescent thing there can be. Apart from the historical topic of light which in the previous decades was expressed with technologies different from today’s, it was expressed through incandescent bulbs or sodium or mercury vapour bulbs, or sodium halides, now instead it’s expressed through LEDs. Much more is known about light’s characteristics, from colour rendering index which is the quality that allows us to perfectly see the colours of the objects we are observing, to luminous efficiency, UGR. The highest quality of light is greatly emphasised not only from the energy-saving point of view, but also the quality of light which must then be appropriately and accurately managed, a feature that is integrated into all of Panzeri products.

In terms of materials, there is also use of increasingly sustainable materials, which have a longer life span. For example, Venixa, instead of using natural wood, Panzeri use sublimated aluminium tubes, where they had taken photographs of cherry wood, and printed them on the back of the aluminium tube, obtaining a result which is long lasting and resembles wood, even though it isn’t.

Manufacturing

The manufacturing processes in Panzeri are entirely managed within the parameter of the company, being a vertically integrated company, allowing them within production, to cover, manage and govern all the processes that bring the product from its concept phase, engineering, prototyping to product and marketing. Specifically, the production process is based on the research of the material and matter in its integration within all the phases of the production process. It starts with the supply of the raw materials; aluminium, steel, brass, solids that are then laser-cut or lathed, pressed, folded, and soldered. By using an extremely handcrafted process, silver solder, allows Panzeri to create objects that seem to be already born as solid three dimensional forms. The next phase is certainly one of the most important, for the final effect. Cleaning is one of the most important phases of the production process because it showcases the quality of the finish of the final object. Panzeri use of a liquid coating, which is a distinctive factor compared to powder coating, is enhanced precisely by the cleaning process. The use of a liquid coating means being able to create very decorative design finishes, allowing the emphasis of the material that lies below the colour of the paint, and to create finishes that are durable.

Panzeri’s work is a continuous process of the integration of people, technology and ideas to seek greater competitiveness and effectiveness. This has allowed the company to evolve from purely decorative products to producing a more technical and architectural catalogue of products.