Press Release

The Florence-based company listed on the Milan Stock Exchange selected as partner to Tag McLaren and Norman Foster's project to illuminate racing team new headquarters.

"The realization of a dream, our new corporate headquarters will be a place for innovation and invention" - the words of Ron Denis, Tag McLaren Group Chairman and CEO as he hails Paragon, the Group's new headquarters currently under construction on a fifty hectare greenfield site in Woking, Surrey, UK.

The Tag McLaren building project, which will make architectural history, was entrusted to Lord Norman Foster, a doyen in contemporary architecture. Foster and Partners designed the new Hong Kong Airport and the Reichstag in Berlin.

The Partners are committed to making the building a manifesto of the McLaren ethos and to represent state-of-the-art technology.

Targetti was called upon to provide lighting schemes for interior and exterior environments, the building complex, the access routes and the lake.
Participation in the Paragon project is a success story founded on Targetti's seventy-year establishment in the industry, reputation for R&D investments, development and production expertise and sound business strategy, along with Targetti's prestigious credits including Piccadilly Circus in London, the Bilbao subway, Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, the old centre in La Rochelle, Milan Piazza della Scala.

An official supplier to the West McLaren Mercedes team since 1996, Targetti enthusiastically took up the challenge of a sheer, multi-faceted project, leveraging on its key strengths, and the ability to meet with vastly complex requirements. Targetti's unparalleled product range perfectly fits a variety of diverse environments, from manufacturing facility areas- including a futuristic wind tunnel created for aerodynamics testing on 50 per cent scale car models, to relaxation - restaurant, pool and gymnasium, and entertainment spaces - museum, visitor center, conference room and exhibition areas.

Targetti is specifying a mixture of off-the-shelf, customized and specially designed products from its own workshops. In association with architects Foster and Partners and US lighting designer Claude Engle, with whom it has been part of the project since the design stage, as early as 1998, Targetti conceived a dedicated solution for the Paragon project.
For the production areas and design offices, Targetti has created a bespoke fluorescent system developed using microoptic technologies to interact with natural light.
Consistent with Targetti's philosophy, the Italian way to lighting design, it is sophisticated, discreet and exclusive. It is the outcome of advanced studies of the science of vision and the behaviour of photons performed at Targetti's Optic Division and Photometric laboratory, in collaboration with the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Ottica, in order to create innovative reflective materials.

The Tag McLaren partnership, €6 million worth representing 5 per cent of Targetti's consolidated sales in 2001, is a unique opportunity for further experimenting.
"Paragon is our Formula One. This challenge has led us to technological breakthroughs we intend to employ in numerous future applications. Thanks to our scientists and engineers' creative insight a new formidable tool has been developed which will enhance our ability to energize environments for people to live and work in. Paragon may ultimately be a sort of macro showcase of our culture of light concept", says Group Chairman Paolo Targetti .

Light infuses human environments with intensely functional and emotional value.
Introducing Targetti's illuminating concepts for its new technology ambience, Tag McLaren acknowledges that and Targetti's ability to harmonically integrate natural and artificial light with unobtrusive and energy-efficient solutions.

"We're obviously thrilled at this project," says Lord Foster " Everyone involved knows this is a unique opportunity to see what an industrial building should be like in the next century".

Information on the Paragon project at: http://www.mclaren-paragon.com/
Information on Targetti at: www.targetti.com

Press Office:
Consuelo de Gara, Targetti Sankey SPA,
tel. 39 055 3791 295 - fax 39 055 3791 255 - e.mail: c.degara@targetti.it