Quick Lighting | Cavalsassi's Foundation

The Cavalsassi Villa is an example of Liberty style eclecticism built in the 1910s in the Nomentano district of Rome, an elegant two-floors residence above ground level with façades featuring classical decorations and floral motifs. It is home to the Cavalsassi Foundation, for which Lighting Designer Marco Ferrelli
designed the new façade relying on Quick Lighting's skills and aesthetic and functional customization.

The Cavalsassi Villa setting is special because it resounds with the echoes of a past lifestyle, refined and oriented towards aesthetics and a taste for beautiful things. Subjected to a constraint of historical-artistic interest, the discretion of the lighting bodies, as well as in line with the idea of intervening delicately and in a respectful manner of the context, was a must, to obtain the authorisation of the Superintendence of Archeology and Fine Arts of the MIBACT.

All the lighting devices applied to the façade are miniaturised, so that they can be easily recessed on
windowsills (Quick Lighting’s Centro Mini) or set back in regard to the façade line so as not to be visible from outside and from the street, as in the case of the crowning on the roof, where Ondaled was used, 1 cm thick light bars suitable for being exposed to the weather, because the LED is “drowned” in a thin layer of polyurethane resin that makes them waterproof and watertight. The only exception are the small projectors placed on the entrances of the ground floor and on the sides of the two French windows of the east façade; the Rocchetto P. further camouflaged by a customized painting that reproduces the colour of the façade.

The decision to manage the façade light with dynamic scenarios, through a DMX signal system, was dictated by the need to use the school’s outdoor space differently over time. Sometimes evening events or theatrical performances take place in the garden and the façade can become a real stage backdrop, suitably lit.

Regarding the solutions adopted in order to highlight the architectural features of the façades, the basic idea was to overturn the paradigm usually used for lighting façades with classical or ancient architectural elements. In fact, it was decided to illuminate the voids, the compartments and the window frames in an asymmetrical manner, because the Centro Mini are recessed laterally on the sill, close to one of the two vertical window frames. The façade, by means of automatic switching cycles, is mostly illuminated in the evening and at night, when the teaching activity is over and the windows are closed. Illuminating the architectural voids of the windows instead of the solids allows us to bring the façade to life as if the building were somehow alive even when the school is closed.