Portfolio Items - Locations - Europe - Ermenegildo Zegna Headquarters

Metis-Lighting-Ermenegildo-Zegna-Headquarters-Milan-Corporate-lightingdesigng

2008

ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA
HEADQUARTERS
MILAN
– INTERIORS

The new Zegna project as led by the Citterio Viel architects, included a lighting design project right from the beginning and this factor determined the overall visual qualities obtained upon the completion of the project.

The new Ermenegildo Zegna Headquarters lighting project and Showroom was meant to be located in the Ex Riva Calzoni industrial space maintaining the existing structural frame. More specifically, the roof organized in sheds would be maintained and re-think completely the underlying plan. In addition to the office spaces, the building accommodates an extensive showroom and a theatre-like space for staging the recurrent runways presentations of the brand.

The particular roof of the building worked as a lightwell for the offices, but in order to always maintain functional lighting during daytime, and highlight this architectural feature during nighttime, a unique detail was developed for inserting a lighting fixture concealed by a diffuser. Transforming the shed structure into a big scale lantern would have been impossible, if the lighting designers had been called to intervene in a more advanced design stage.

Particular attention was paid into the integration of light in other architectural features, making lighting fixtures look like sewn together with the interior design finishings like in the staircase, an icon of the building due to the numerous photoshoots.

In the Zegna showroom, diffuse light from luminous ceiling portions and adjustable lighting fixtures were combined for the proper illumination of the garments.
When the lighting design enters the whole process of the project since the conception, it is a great opportunity to integrate the functional lighting but also obtaining poetic nuances or shaping the presence of the whole building at night, making it all look natural.