Icone Talks is the periodic event in which the director of Icone, Giulio Capellini, discusses issues related to lighting and design with some of the most important architects on the international scene. This contribution is taken from “Icone Talks” with the architect and designer Carlo Colombo.

Before the light it was not a particularly relevant element within the project, but today it has become fundamental.

The light changes, transforms, highlights the details, the materials and the whole series of finishes that we architects are going to adopt in the facades, or in interior projects. The luminous effect of the product from different lighting systems can really change the quality of the project.

The same thing also applies to natural light, because when we design private villas or projects where modernity is fundamental, in the play of transparency and in the possibility of sharing spaces between inside and outside, natural light completely changes the quality of the project.

It is precisely from natural light that we architects try to attract those who are the information and effects that nature in itself already gives us, and we artificially transform it within our projects.

Many companies specialized in lighting architecture have been created, which plan to dispose of the exterior and interior just to help us architects to solve a whole series of problems.

We rely on a series of technicians, architects of light, external consultants, who are there, through our design needs, of care and by far visible our interventions, from the point of view of the face and finishes, and still enhance that which is the aesthetic and material quality of the projects.

The substantial difference between decoration, that is, ornamental light, and technical light, is that they are two very different disciplines, they belong to two completely different worlds also from a technological point of view. These are two approaches that we want to know how to deal with and make the most of in order to create wonderful works.

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