Mario Nanni

6 May, 2010

There aren’t many children who want to be lighting designers when they grow up, but the Italian ‘maestro of light’ Mario Nanni can trace his fascination with the light bulb back to his childhood trips to the cinema: ‘As a child I was fascinated by projected light, he explains. ‘My grandfather used to take me to the cinema and it was here, in the darkness, that I first perceived the dynamism of light.’

It was the cinema that inspired Nanni to create his LIV (Lampadima a Immagini Variabili, or variable image lamp), which he uses in many of his projects. For Milan’s Festival of Light, which ran from December to this January, Nanni created La Luce Della Musica, an extravaganza of light which used the LIV to project video and static images on to Milan’s opera house, Teatro Alla Scala. For 24 minutes, its neo-classical facade came alive with giant stacks of books to represent knowledge and culture, a twinkling star for the time of year, and boats gliding between windows representing the transport of white marble along the Navigli canals.

Born into a working-class family in the small town of Bizzuno, Nanni ascribes much of his ambition to the wise words of his grandfather. ‘He told me that people can be divided into those who talk and those who act, and that I would have to decide which side to be on,’ he says. He chose to be a doer. Graduating in 1974, he found work as an electrician, but he worked tirelessly to build a reputation as one of Italy’s most successful lighting designers. After freelancing for many years, he founded his lighting company, Viabizzuno, in 1994 and now lectures at the University of Ferrara.

While Nanni’s more conceptual ‘solo work’, such as La Luce Della Musica, is done under the labelMario Nanni Progettista, Viabizzuno deals with architectural lighting and products, which are often designed in collaboration with architects and product designers.

In 2003 Nanni created a lighting scheme including underwater LEDs for the swimming pool of the amazing Therme Spa in Vals, Switzerland, which was designed by Pritzker prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor, and there have been a string of other high-profile collaborations with architects such as Kengo Kuma and Joan Sibina.

Nanni sees light and architecture as inseparable. ‘One has to understand how to use structure, materials and forms to place light sources correctly, to utilise light in a way that the final result transmits the uniqueness of the project, the integrity and formal purity,’ he says.

Viabizzuno produces the hugely successful 094 System, designed by Nanni, which can be fitted with any light source and integrated into plasterboard walls and the Cubo Doccia, a showerhead with intergraded lighting which Nanni says is often copied.

His work for both Mario Nanni Progettista and Viabizzuno is at the forefront of technology, but he still has a soft spot for the light source that first inspired him. ‘Innovation and technology are indispensable in my work but I am also interested in the study of old materials and techniques used in the past,’ he says. ‘Nowadays, people talk a lot about LEDs and energy-saving light bulbs. I have been fighting for a long time to preserve the incandescent light bulb.’

On his website, he appeals for more research into how the incandescent bulb can be used without damaging the environment and calls for students to write their university thesis on the subject. ‘It’s not the quantity of light, but the quality that makes a project into a good light project.’ he writes.

‘For this to continue, the light bulb must carry on existing. We need to avoid using it indiscriminately and avoid a lack of awareness in designing, which leads to the use of artificial light sources for superficial, indifferent purposes or even just for fashion.’

Even so, much of Nanni’s work goes far beyond functional lighting, and projects such as his installation Storie di Luce for the 2008-2009 Venice Biennale come very close to being art installations in their own right. In a room inside the late-gothic Palazzo Giustinian, Nanni created interactive sketchbooks by projecting images on to the pages of blank books. When visitors touched the books, a sensor made them come to life, and images of Nanni’s work danced across the pages.

So can lighting design be art? The boy from Bizzuno isn’t sure: ‘If you understand art as a way to express and communicate emotions, then yes, lighting design can be seen as an art.’