Even for those who see it on a daily basis, the building designed by Niemeyer, headquarters of Gruppo Mondadori, is amazing for its visionary modernity made of solid traditional architectural features, in tune with forms of extraordinary creativity capable of making “natural light establish a dialogue with the building.”
This is the “base” behind the inspiration of the master of lighting design, Mario Nanni, to complete his innovative and poetic renewal of the building’s lighting. The project calls for a system that is completely integrated in the architecture, a permanent dynamic lighting arrangement that starts at the base of the load-bearing pillars to bring out the monumental impact, displaying the material with the right color temperature, varying across the hours of the day and night and with the sequence of the seasons.
The light interacts with the surfaces of the building’s 23 pillars, one minute for each, plus a meridian of light, the 24th “source” that marks time. 24 minutes to represent 24 hours: from dawn to morning to noon, afternoon to sundown, dusk to darkness.
The new lighting system of Palazzo Mondadori was presented yesterday evening, for the summer solstice, the shortest night of the year, with “Sospeso, leggero ma non troppo,” an event/poem of light by Mario Nanni and dedicated – by Ernesto Mauri, CEO of Gruppo Mondadori at its 110th anniversary – “to all the employees and collaborators who work inside this iconic construction.”