Foscarini
185
Top right and above, 2017, Maestrie
installation, Peter Bottazzi, Spazio Brera.
Opposite, 2018, Reverse Room installation,
James and Suzan Wines, Spazio Brera.
2016, Reality or Illusion installation,
Ferruccio Laviani, Spazio Brera.
About shedding light
ries, triggering associations of ideas and relationships, while at the same time offering
a repertory of facts and personalities, technological and creative revolutions, changes
in styles and ways of living, all inside a fl ow of mutations and achievements.
Other moments of in-depth exploration of themes and research in design came with
the exhibitions – again for Milano Design Week – installed in the Spazio Brera showro-
om, opened in Milan in 2013. In the spring of 2017 its spaces, emptied for the occasion,
hosted the installation Fare Luce (also a book-catalogue) by the architect Giovanni Maria
Filindeu, who created six settings corresponding to different forms of light, emphasi-
zing emotional impressions over technical performance. Another form of immersion,
where to suggest how light can give meaning to spaces and transform locations, feelin-
gs and references were activated, as in the room on the fi rst encounter with light, or the
spaces that presented light as a gift, as energy and wonder.
During the Brera Design Days, in the fall that same year, Spazio Brera welcomed the
exhibition Maestrie connected with the publishing project of the same name, focusing
on the synergy between the company, its designers and the exceptional artisans invol-
ved, narrated through the photographs of Gianluca Vassallo, with writings by Stefano
Micelli and Manolo De Giorgi, and a photographic contribution by Massimo Gardone,
along with a series of videos. A multidimensional dialogue across various exhibits, for-
mulated in an installation by the set designer and architect Peter Bottazzi.
In 2018 came a traveling installation, Reverse Room, created by the American archi-
tect James Wines and accompanied by a monograph (edited by Michele Calzavara) on
the work of the studio SITE, which was founded by Wines. The show, made in collabora-
tion with his daughter Suzan Wines, included all the pieces of the Light Bulb Series – fi ve
interpretations in a numbered limited edition of the light bulb icon – with which after
almost thirty years Wines resumed a relationship with Foscarini that began in 1991
with the work Table Light / Wall Light for the fair Abitare il Tempo in Verona. Reverse Room
was a chamber with dark walls, turned upside-down and sloped, with a monochro-
me table and chairs, in which the suspension lamps sprout from the fl oor, while the
table lamps peer down from the ceiling, challenging our perception of spaces and our
response to environmental stimuli and conventions. With Wines Foscarini has inserted
the Light Bulb table lamp in two versions, White Light and Black Light (2018), in the catalo-
gue. In 2022, the company – together with White Box Studio – produced the fi lm James
VS Wines – The High Rise of Meanings directed by Gianluca Vassallo.
At centre stage: exhibits and displays for communication and sales
Also in the fi eld of exhibition design and retail design – associated with the events
for the presentation of products and their communication in the form of displays and
Chap. 4 — Communicating the culture of light
185
