presente per ricomporre con luce di qualità uno spazio dinamico, un percorso filologico di interazione di ambiti luminosi e di esperienze percettive. Spazi somatici( personali e di individuazione della posizione del proprio corpo), espositivi-museali, sociorelazionali, emozionali, di rappresentazione vengono scanditi con architetture di luce in cui il soggetto esperisce il contorno luminoso. Qui sta il legame e il pensiero condiviso tra storico e fisico: il concetto di luce come formante fisico e plastico dell’ architettura.
Riferimenti Canesi, G. e Cassi Ramelli, A., Architetture luminose e apparecchi per illuminazione. Milano, Hoepli Editore, 1941. Balocco, C.,“ Riflessioni su luce, comunicazione visiva e percezione”, LUCE 317, 2016, pp. 1-5. Balocco C., Baldanzi E., Farini A., Tito A., e Raffaelli M.,“ Luce e arte: stimoli percettivi e tecniche eye-tracking”, LUCE 320, 2017, pp. 101-106. Cozzi, M.,“ Luminous Architecture around the mid-1930s: some Italian Cases”, paper from a colloquium held at Ecole nationale supérieure d’ architecture de Nantes, Dec. 10-12, 2009. Cozzi M.,“ I palazzi delle poste italiane. 1919-1943”, in Andrea Giuntini( a cura), Le Poste in Italia tra le due guerre. 1919-1945, Roma e Bari, Laterza, 2007, pp. 211-242. Cozzi M.,“ Altri turismi per le città d’ arte”, ANANKE 83, 2018, pp. 141-144.
Nello Baroni, cinema teatro Rex, Firenze, via Nazionale 1937 / Nello Baroni, Rex theater, Florence, via Nazionale 1937
Light as a plastic formant of Architecture
Thought exchange between a technical physicist and an architectural historia
For an Architectural Historian, to talk about light and illumination means to talk about Vitruvius and his De Architectura. For Vitruvius, the correct building orientation and positioning to best capture the solar radiation are the cornerstones of any project: the functional distribution of the interior spaces is linked to light and the“ opening’ s light”, i. e. the light coming from doors / windows(“ lumen” defines their width). The historian insists on Western culture: light is in the Prometheus myth, of a symbolic imagery; from the( natural) light made of shadow and darkness of the Middle Ages, to the Renaissance’ s“ Painting of light” made by light and colour, shapes and“ aerial perspectives”, up to the artificial light of the second half of the nineteenth century, from which came the explosion of luminous architectures and artistic and pictorial expressions of the Modern and the Avantgardes. On this background enters the technical physicist, who refers to Relativity and quantum mechanics. The technical physicist shows how the space that is represented, lived and built today, and all the techniques and technologies, would be unthinkable without a reflection on the extraordinary physical properties of light, its independence from the observer’ s reference system, and its propagation velocity through a vacuum. The link and communication between the historian and the physicist lies in light and in its ability to transmit information, connecting subjects with different formae mentis and approaches. Light sets in motion semiotic processes, even if it does not belong to any signification system: it is not a“ text”, it is“ imponderable” matter, and its sub-signedness directs actions, contributes to the communication / transmission of thoughts, feelings, and sensations, to the circadian rhythm, and to the choices of taking action. As Peirce would say, light is a representamen, a sign that produces in the mind of the receiving subject an equivalent sign, a mental representation, an idea in between sensoriality and cognition. Light is a channel of communication between two subjects with different culture and language, becoming an interpretant of the first, transmitted to the latter. Light gives shape, sense, and meaning to objects and spaces; it colours them, highlighting contrast and brightness. The dialogue between the historian and the physicist leads back to the reading of the meaning of an( architectural) form in its outline, because the eye, the only effective contrast sensor, detects( vision mechanism) the quantity of light that floods it; the value of this same form, i. e. its informative content, lies in the quality of the transmitted / communicated light. If we reflect on the evolution over time of the relationship between light and architecture, we face a very intriguing question: illuminated architecture and illuminating architecture, which, in the lighting field, refers to the relationship between designing light and designing with light. If we look at the relationship between architecture, engineering, and design with a semiotic interpretation of their interaction, we can deduce a very close link between the deductive approach( basis of architectural planning; the historian’ s position), the inductive one( base of modelling and engineering experimentation; the physicist’ s position), and the abductive one( on which design and lighting design are based; an interdisciplinary result). Lighting design is not the simple design of lighting systems or products, but the whole of these conceptual positions( historian and physicist). Therefore, it is the result
30 LUCE 325 / TERZA PAGINA