The Palazzo Rosso project enters the category architectural lighting works: lighting design for palaces. The building was constructed between 1671 and 1677. The building was designed by the architect Pietro Antonio Corradi. The building is laid out on a U-shaped plan. In 1874 it was donated to the Municipality along with the collections. Franco Albini‘s design in the 1950s is not only a valuable testimony to Genoa but also conveys a new architectural and museographic culture which left other important examples in the post-war period in Carlo Scarpa‘s designs for the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona and for Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo, or in BBPR‘s designs for Castello Sforzesco in Milan. Albini integrates the daylight of the large windows screened by curtains with a single system: he designs a steel profile, perimeter to support arm lamps, double emission (wall and ceiling) and the works. The eighteenth-century chandeliers and candelabra are retained for ambient lighting. Piero Castiglioni’s lighting design project maintains the “Albini” layout, an integral part of the Palazzo’s history: he replaces incandescent sources with very low-voltage dichroic halogen lamps to adapt the lighting to the new museographic requirements, the control of illuminance values, and current regulations. The showcases, designed by Albini, are adapted to accommodate fibre optics: remote lighting source, no infrared and ultraviolet radiation inside, adapting it to the regulations in force at the time.
Project:
Lighting Design Piero Castiglioni
Collaborations:
Luigi Cerri Architects
Photo Courtesy:
Piero Castiglioni
Year:
2005
Other Projects
Orsay Museum where architecture became a big lighting device, the reflections of light bulbs with walls and ceilings create a uniform light without shadows. Groups of projectors in Grassi Palace recall a small football field. Here was born a new type of lighting device. Reflector lamps and articulated support gives life at the "Cestello". Spasa na Krovi is a perfection of Mantova project. Light beams aggregation allow the device size reduction and the dispersion light control.
