Gio Ponti Relight
Elective affinities between Ponti and Olivari
SALONE DEL MOBILE 2018
After 30 years, the San Francesco d’Assisi al Fopponino church in Milan, for whose interior Gio Ponti and Olivari collaborated on the Cono door handle, will now once again be illuminated in the way Ponti intended.
16–22 April 2018
Guided tours from 7.30 pm to 10.15 pm
Given by bilingual architects (Italian and English)
San Francesco d’Assisi al Fopponino Church
Via Paolo Giovio 41, Milan
The church is open 7 days a week
from 8.00 am to 12.30 pm and from 4.00 pm to 10.00 pm
In collaboration with Gio Ponti Archives
The restoration of the metal parts
Olivari has offered to bring Ponti’s lamps back “to light” by wielding its technological and artisanal expertise toward their restoration.
The 20 brass suspension lamps lining the church’s central nave were disused in the 1980s in favour of new brighter lamps. Fitted with metal-halide bulbs, these powerful latter-day spotlights badly distorted Ponti’s original spatial concept and its intimate atmosphere. Over the years, the old brass lamps had also oxidised and blackened, losing the luminous, elegant finish with which they had been designed.
The restoration began with the lamps’ metal structure, and was executed at the Olivari factory. The first step was to determine the type of finish that had originally been applied to the brass. This was analysed in the laboratory. After sanding and grinding the surface to remove the layer of oxidation, the brass half-cylinders were satined horizontally, coated with transparent varnish and heated in a furnace. This will allow the lamps to maintain their fresh beauty for many years to come.
Technical update
In parallel, with the advice of lighting engineer Carlo Bignoli, Olivari devised a solution based on low-voltage LED strips providing the same number of lumens originally emitted by the curved, shaped neon tubes. The strips were fixed to the brass element with a reversible system, so as to remain invisible and diffuse a soft, warm light.
In agreement with the cultural heritage department of the Archdiocese of Milan, two objectives were set.
The first was to restore the metal components to their original appearance, using products that would guarantee good stability over time. The second was to replace the light sources with technologically advanced ones, with a longer service life and lower energy costs.
The final aim was to rehabilitate the meditative atmosphere Gio Ponti had strived to obtain when he designed both the lamps and the window apertures in such a way as to bathe the church in suffusive light. Olivari has now restored the hanging lamps and their light, elegant aesthetics to their former splendour.
