The light of the white pages. Casa Decor 2003 / Barcelona
The creative process: water as a source of life and light
This project was carried out in collaboration with Mario Nanni, Viabizzuno. Mario was the originator of the concept and the project; VilaBlanch was its Coordinator and executor in Barcelona in close collaboration with Arcaya team and the team of Viabizzuno.
During the edition of Casa Decor Barcelona 2003, the studio VilaBlanch already participated with its own space, Black and White 360ª.
However, due to the intense collaboration with the Italian lighting company Viabizzuno, the studio suggested to its artistic director and designer, Mario Nanni, the proposal to carry out an installation where to show his designs and his vision of the world of lighting technology.
The author of the project was Mario Nanni, while the assembly and direction of the work was coordinated by the team of interior designers vilablanch, who worked closely with the Italian designer and designer.
Mario Nani used his designs and his experience in the world of lighting technology to make an interactive artistic installation.
Illuminated swings, shower drops, brightly colored floating lamps and a huge sculpture of pallets render a poetic tribute to light and natural elements, water and fire, as sources of life. White pages are seen as a starting point in the creative process.
"The light reflected by the blank pages is not polluted. It is pure, ready to receive our images and our thoughts. Just as when I was a child in front of an empty notebook, I still experience the same pleasure when opening a blank page: I stop in front of the possibility of starting, every time, for the first time, and of being moved by so much emptiness."
Mario Nanni. Viabizzuno.
The installation took place in the old hall of about 500 square meters, an emblematic building that was the former headquarters in Barcelona of the financial institution BCH.
The installation was divided into several areas delimited by different structural elements:
- A huge 8-meter-long sculpture made of 1000 recycled industrial pallets separated the space by drawing a diagonal.
- A pool-pond 30 cm deep and 18 meters long, covered with black rubber was created.
- The bottom wall was "created" with a huge curtain held by stainless steel cables and uprights.
- The side walls were made of painted black plasterboard. One of them is formed by a double wall of pladur to show an innovative system of technical illumination.
The wall of pallets is the starting point: it crosses the hall like a dividing curtain, monumental but light and transparent at the same time. Inside the pallet has been placed white paper, to remember its birth of the wood and its life path.
Three small pallets contain large posters. These posters are perforated in the shape of a light bulb sticking out in its center. At the base of the pallets, in the niche in the interior of the posters, a light bulb generates light, which runs through the paper "bulb tube" to project on the ceiling, "building" again the image of the original bulb drained in paper.
In the pond-pool, with water in continuous motion, there are autonomous illuminating bodies floating in white, red, blue. These floating lamps in transparent plastic are the model Upo Gallegio of Viabizzuno with autonomous feeding by rechargeable batteries.
The large Big Feet lamps, partially submerged in the water, create a bridge that allows to pass through the pool.
From the ceiling three huge drops, more than 7 meters high, made of plastic material, with a fiberglass base, suspended from the two great sources of life: light and water.
The drops were equipped with the cube-shower design of Viabizzuno, which projects light and incorporates the movement of water, creating suggestive light plays. The showers operated in closed circuit, with powerful pumps, that took the water and collected it in the base of the base.
An iron structure was welded to the roof, holding four swings on the pond. These swings are also designs of the Italian firm that generate light at its base, powered by batteries, projecting a trail of light in motion.
One of the walls was formed by a double wall of pladur where to show the new technical lighting system of Viabizzuno and create a suggestive game of images with the visitors.
The separation between the walls of plaster was 60 cm, where four projectors were suspended, and the interior of the niche was painted black, creating a sensation of total darkness.
The visitor had at his fingertips A3-size blank pages that were inserted through the horizontal groove of the wall where they projected suggestive images relating to light, fire and water. For Mario Nani, this was the 'well of desires', the reflection we seek in the light of the white pages.
This double inner wall had an opening of 13 meters long and 25 cm high, created with the system of profiles 094 of Viabizzuno, an innovative series that allows to create technical lighting embedded in the pladur without frame or joints, as light entrances perfectly defined in the work.
