About MonViso Institute
The MonViso Institute (MVI) is an evolving open innovation system - an experimental place and space for research, education, design, art, entrepreneurship, inner development and new living on holistic resilience and regenerative systems design.
MVI is a place of mind and practice, to inform flow-states of mind that are place-independent.
We work locally, we are immersed in the Po River bioregion, we are globally interconnected and practice meta-awareness for being entangled parts of living systems.
Mountain campus
The place is the MVI mountain campus, a formerly abandoned group of six stone houses, a “borgata” or hamlet on 1500m asl, stewarded by us since 2015, which we are in the process of mindfully restoring to the MVI Living Systems Lab campus. MVI campus is located at the “Serre Lamboi” Frazione of the Ostana village in the High Po River Valley of Italy, at the border with France, and close to the source of the Po River, forming the hydrogeographic headwaters of the Po River bioregion.
Associations in Italy and Switzerland
Since 2019, MVI is registered as a non-profit association under Italian law in Turin with the aim to restore, develop and manage the mountain campus, and to make experimental research and learning accessible to the local and regional public. The campus is owned privately.
Since 2024, MVI is also a registered non-profit association under Swiss law in Zurich, with the aim to organize joint work with ETH Zurich on the DRRS learning program and on research in regenerative practice, to develop and make accessible the research and practice originating from the MVI Living Systems Lab campus in the Italian Alps.
Partnering with ETH Zurich
MVI is the partner of ETH Zurich’s Systemic Design Lab to add a real-world lab facet to academia, to develop holistic approaches to research, design and practice on place-specific regeneration, and to co-offer the DRRS learning program together.
MVI Switzerland hosts the Systemic Cycles program. The MVI campus in Italy hosts the company Grown Design.
Supported by AVINA STIFTUNG
AVINA STIFTUNG from Switzerland is our partner in achieving the integrated “scaling deep and scaling out” regenerative practice work of MVI, with a focus on partnering with ETH on the DRRS program, developing the Systemic Cycles guide training program, advancing Living Systems Lab research, and partnering in all of this with Daniel Wahl and his bioregional regeneration weaving work on Mallorca and the Balearic Archipelago.
Vision and mission
Our vision is being lived in real time: while the MVI is evolving as Institute - state of mind independent from place – it is as well evolving as place, a mountain campus, where the state of mind is lived and experienced in real.
MVI’s mission is to re-think and re-design how we want to live now and in the future. Resilient, regenerative, blending local traditions, regional resources, and global openness.
We believe that design is at a pivotal movement to confront complex challenges of global scale with place-based inclusive responses at the intersection of science, creativity, and systemic innovation.
Goals
The evolving MVI is a pathway of experimentation in the real world, guided by a set of goals:
- Experimenting with resilient community models of individual freedom, collective support, and new alpine-urban lifestyles
- Shaping bio-regional supply chains and circular economies that are socially, economically and ecologically regenerative
- Designing buildings that perform like forests - renewable materials, circular in energy and water, healthy indoor climate, and beautiful
- Anticipating crises as triggers of shaping new opportunities for personal and collective growth and resilience
- Building capacity through academic teaching, professional training, and mutual exchange on experiential seeds for systemic innovation
- Incubating entrepreneurial sustainability by balancing local identity and international inspiration
- Engaging beyond mental and physical comfort zones, through philosophical discourse, intercultural curiosity, and outdoor sports action
- Enjoying the journey as Scientists, Designers, Social Engineers, Players in the Outdoors, and Friends thriving for Happiness
Our logo
Explanation of the logo - symbol and text combination
The Institute´s character is kind of a more settled, research and education laboratory, while interlayering with fresh entrepreneurial and creative living experiments. The MonViso name and the Institute term provide for international recognition and concept guidance.
Diamond shape - relates to the stone roof tiles, „lose“ in Italian. Squared lose are integral part of the Occitan building tradition and code in Ostana; every roof must use them. At MVI, we introduce a photovoltaic lose, mimicing lose with similar shape/size/roof pattern and in grey color, to receive permission and change the building codes: tradition carefully interpreted to respond to todayʼs necessity for building carbon-negative buildings.
Monte Viso -3842m asl high landmark and cultural icon of the region, visible from Torino and even Milano, from Cinque Terre at the Mediterranean sea, and marking the border to France. The Po river originates from here. Monviso, my Viso, as the locals call „Il Re di Pietra“, the king of stone. Monte Viso is said to be one of the inspirations for the Paramount logo, and was featured in the literature, e.g. in Danteʼs Inferno.
The buildings indicate the architectural component of the Institute, and the balance and trade between „preserving traditions“ and „careful systemic innovation“. In total six buildings, the symbol shows two dinstinctly different houses: The original, small, box stone house with no roof overhang and few small windows, and the modern interpretation in the „Doppio“, the passive net-positive building which we re-built from an old ruin. The Doppio combines traditional elements (some stone walls, lose on the N roof) with modern elements of passive energy design (large three-pane windows, PV lose on the S roof, larch wood facade, overall higher ceilings). Both types of buidlings will co-exist on the campus.
Serre Lamboi is the traditional name for the place of the MonViso Institute (MVI). It means „terrace/grove of the Laburnum tree“, engl. Golden Rain/Chain (Laburnum alpinum), a yellowish flowering tree with very dark and dense heartwood, substitute to ebony or rosewood. Since local people mention the name Monviso being overused, and quickly sounding „cheap“ in their ears, we add the place name „Serre Lamboi“ as the localized wording for the Institute, gaining acceptance and support, merging local traditions and understanding.
