Light can stimulate and provide incentive for meeting, for interaction, for social aggregation, the true resource and the future of the city. Artificial light at night not only redraws the architecture of urban spaces but also can infuse them with new life if designed to make the spaces safe and welcoming. There are places in a city - streets, large and small squares, parks and gardens - especially those outside the center and having no real historical, artistic, or monumental attractions, that are well-loved by the inhabitants but in the main ignored by administrators and visitors passing through the city. Their valorization is usually not contemplated in the works plans voted by the city governments, which for reasons of external promotion of the image of the city are more interested in concentrating their urban improvement actions in a few central areas. However these other areas, well-loved and yet unknown, are true centers of positive energy for the city, since they favor spontaneous aggregation and social interaction; this vocation can be reinforced and extended into the nighttime hours, with light.

 

Can illumination of the city become an efficacious urban policy tool? Through development of a lighting project for several public spaces in the Town of Scandicci, near Florence, the professionals from all around the world who will be participating in the Workshop under the expert guidance of the French lighting designer Roger Narboni will be asked to give a positive response to this query. The Workshop will be a special occasion for examining the role of artificial light as a “light-handed” tool and at the same time one that can have great impact in transforming or reinforcing the potential of urban spaces through suitable planning. Scandicci is a modern small center in the Florence metropolitan area. Its population is for the most part young and characterized by a strong vocation for everything contemporary; it is a town to man’s measure, capable of putting forth audacious proposals in the fields of both urban planning and culture. Selection of the spaces that will be studied during the Workshop will be based on work of analysis and mapping to be conducted before the Workshop by a working group of students of the Academia delle Belle Arti, ISIA, and the Faculty of Architecture involved in the course entitled “Laboratory. The methods and techniques of the urban event” coordinated by Teatro Studio of Scandicci. This preliminary work will provide the Workshop participants with information and thorough documentation on the contexts in which they will be intervening at the project level. 

 

Lecturer: Roger Narboni, Franch Indipendent Lighting Designer founded Concepto agency in 1988. With Concepto achieved more than 60 lighting master plans in France and abroad (Nantes, Bordeaux, Clermont-Ferrand, Paris, Roubaix, Brussels, Namur, Athens centre, etc.). He realised also several urban and architectural lighting design such as  Fondazione Cartier, Place Charles de Gaulle e Notre-Dame a Parigi. Teacher since 1999, at Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Nature et du Paysage, Blois (France). Author of the book « Urban Light » (Ed. Le Moniteur) and he is member of the AFE association, since 1992 (French association of lighting).

 

Lenguage: English

 

Cost: 1.000 Euros + VAT (20%). The fee include study material, the hotel booking service, shuttle service to connect the hotel to the workshop headquarters, coffee breaks, lunches.

 

The venue: La Sfacciata, Via Volterrana 82 - 50023 Florence.