Milan’s Torre Arcobaleno Gets New LED Night Lighting
The Torre Arcobaleno in Milan’s Garibaldi area has a new night lighting system. The intervention, curated in partnership by a group of Italian companies, repurposed as a tribute to the city and the people of Milan, further qualifies a structure that has become in recent years one of the symbols of modern Milan in terms of location, history and content, both architectural and design, the largest “vertical ceramic mosaic” with its 1,000 square metres.
The new system uses powerful Led floodlights and gives the 35-meter Torre Arcobaleno, a special charm, with a fairy-tale effect, highlighting the many shades of colors that have made it so recognisable and beloved by the Milanese, as well as a cult object for creative people and design enthusiasts around the world. The new 397 W LED floodlights in fact allow for more precise and pinpoint illumination of the tower’s silhouette, increasing color rendering while maintaining the low power consumption of the previous system. The lifespan of the new floodlights is about 100,000 hours.
Spearheading the project is the architecture division of the Original Designers Studio 6R5 Network of Francesco Roggero, Albino Pozzi, Rita Alfano Roggero and Kiyoto Ishimoto, who acted as “director” involving other excellent names of Made in Italy, all united and determined to keep the beauty of the Torre Arcobaleno intact, enhancing it even in its night vision. The partners are:
- Bazzea Construction Technology – Renovation work
- Condor – Formwork, Scaffolding (metal multidirectional scaffolding)
- Disano Illuminazione – Lighting
- Fila Solutions – Surface cleaning
- Marazzi Group – Tiles
- Mapei – Adhesives, renovation and painting
- Comune di Milano – Milan City Council
RFI, the company of the infrastructure cluster of Gruppo Ferrovie dello Stato, have also patronised this new initiative, in continuity with the choice made at the beginning of the history of the recovery project.
A Taste of History
The tower in its load-bearing concrete structure dates back to 1964, when it served as a simple water tank inside the railway yard of Milan’s Porta Garibaldi station. Settled limestone had caused oxidation of the iron and crumbling of the concrete, causing conspicuous external leaks. On the occasion of the 1990 World Cup in Italy, the tower then underwent its first significant renovation, which transformed a work designed solely for service purposes, an urban element with essentially aesthetic-symbolic, but highly recognisable, value. The result was achieved mainly through the placement of 100, 000, 10 x 10 cm module tiles of 14 different colors as cladding.
The idea behind the project was to highlight the structure of the tower, which is circular in plan and concave in shape, divided into twenty-two faces interrupted by as many raised ribs. A thorough rehabilitation of the tower’s walls and ribs was undertaken, providing consolidation, waterproofing of surfaces, reconstruction of the removed parts, and painting of the connecting parts.
Underlying the project was an idea on the part of the designers from Milan-based Original Designers Studio 6R5 Network to promote a new attitude of care and pride in the city’s urban heritage. The redevelopment also included the rehabilitation of an old railway bridge between Viale Forlanini and Viale Corsica, later called the “Passaggio a Nord Est.”
Finally, in 2015, the year of the Expo, the tower was again restored and modernised by the same group of companies involved today, which assumed the full costs of an intervention seen as a tribute to the Milanese in an occasion of exceptional visibility for the city such as the international exposition.
In the meantime, the Garibaldi area of nearby Piazza Gae Aulenti has become the heart of the Milan of design, fashion and modern architecture, redesigned with its futuristic skyscrapers that find in the Torre Arcobaleno a “coloured ceramic totem,” an evolution of the artisan origins of the Italian master ceramists who have landed in the industrial world and are now recognised worldwide as a national excellence.
Today, the Torre Arcobaleno’s new adventure continues with new lighting, destined to amaze the Milanese and tourists arriving from all over the world.
