In this issue:

The Salone del Mobile 2021 celebrated the intersection of design and the transformation of Milan with the exhibition “il Salone / la Città”. Curated by Mario Piazza and conceived by the Italian Design Museum, it was presented at the Triennale at the opening of the Salone by president Stefano Boeri, Maria Porro, president of the Salone del Mobile, and the curator himself. Tracing 60 years of cultural projects created by the Salone del Mobile within the city’s spaces, the exhibition offers a critical reading of the most significant productions of an event that has promoted Italian design and Milan throughout the world. This is not a didactic exhibition, but rather an evocative and poetic one. Architect Piazza, with his cultivated eye on the ways of narrating graphic compositions that have revolutionised the use of images and photography, charts the history of the objects that represent us through different materials from the Triennale’s archives – photographs, objects, videos, scripts, installations and other documents arranged in sequence in a fluid space – that show how events and Milan interpenetrate and involve a heterogeneous public. It is an unprecedented dialogue between the city and design that was foreseen long beforehand, as the Salone del Mobile has been lighting up an entire city and bringing the Made in Italy beauty and quality to the world since 1961.

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The author wonders whether in 1962, when the American scientist Nick Holonyak brought the first red luminescent diode onto the market, he was really aware of the importance of his discovery and of how much it would profoundly and radically change the whole lighting technology sector, from the energy-distribution sector to production and design. Indeed, thanks to the progressive evolution of the research he initiated, during the last few decades the new technology has marked the beginning of an extraordinary technological era, not only at a technical and applicational level but also at a philosophical, methodological and conceptual one. Therefore, it has been necessary to reconfigure an aesthetics of light, which has totally and ineluctably involved the field of production and that of design. Light is increasingly becoming a “sign”, a powerful, intense and bewitching communication signal, which sends clear and unequivocal messages in the construction of a visual discourse.

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A graduate and PhD student at the Politecnico di Torino, she is co-founder and creative director of Light Follows Behaviour, a lighting design studio that designs with people and for people, and of the Social Light Movement (SLM), whose aim is to bring lighting to underserved communities. She focuses her attention on lighting design and academic research initiatives, working on urban, outdoor and public lighting plans. She has taught at the Universities of Rome, Milan and Turin and was responsible for the cultural and educational programmes of the Lighting Academy of the Targetti Foundation until 2010. She has been a visiting professor at the Rhode Island School of Art and Design (RISD) in Providence, USA, from 2014 to 2018. She is a researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science. At the end of the meeting, with the friendliness of her smile, she gave us a message and a challenge that we believe requires commitment: “Curiosity. The desire not to stop at what you know, to always be curious about discovering and learning new things, to put yourself on the line, the ability to admit that you do not know. This is something that is often missing! We want to know everything, but sometimes we don’t know. And it is perfectly fine not to know!”.

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Reappointed as president of AIDI last June, Gian Paolo Roscio outlines the objectives of the historic Italian association over the next two years. At the top of the list are professional training, the National Congress in Naples in 2022, the institution of an award, and the recognition of the lighting design profession. And LUCE magazine, “which resists and holds up well despite the times, a challenge to be carried on.” After the change in the statute, his presidency will be an unusual one, lasting a five-year period: the three years of his first mandate, plus two for the two-year period that has just begun. The reappointment, decided by the General Meeting of Members a few months ago, was without competition, unlike the one three years ago, when the race for the presidency was full of candidates.

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The 17th Architecture Biennale curated by Hashim Sarkis is an opportunity for analysis and reflection on the role of design in a holistic and transversal sense. It touches on environmental, social and cultural aspects, as well as technological and experimental ones. At a time of serious environmental crises and disconnections between the natural balance and the everyday life dominated by anthropisation, some projects focus on possible solutions but above all on the “restorative” role that a correct design can trigger in areas and environments where liveability has reached almost irreversible levels of criticality and degradation. Between the Corderie at the Arsenale, the Giardini at Sant’Elena and over 17 accredited pavilions in the city itself, five research themes lay the foundations for unravelling some of the most important social and spatial dilemmas.

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The new book Dire luce. A two-voice reflection on stage lighting, edited by the lighting designer and director of photography together with Cristina Grazioli, lecturer in History and Aesthetics of Stage Lighting at the University of Padua, contains the reflections that the two authors have been developing during numerous meetings, debates and conferences, dealing with the subject of light from two different points of view, one creative and the other academic. It is organised under twelve headings that analyse twelve characteristics of light: invisibility, matter, writing, dust, darkness, colour, movement, voice, transparency, atmosphere, botany, air. The dialogue offers insights that show how light opens up the stage experience to the world and how this flows seamlessly through it into creative languages. With Pasquale Mari, who has been working with light for over thirty years, we started from an analysis of the book to discuss his artistic sensitivity and his latest projects.

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In LUCE 337.2021 you will find many other articles, special reports, interviews and insights. We are always on the lookout for new suggestions and ideas to understand, explain and raise awareness of the world of Italian and international lighting. Keep reading and writing to us.

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