Stibbert Museum - The Japanese Rooms

The enthusiastic XIX century collector Frederick Stibbert dedicated almost fifty years to finishing the greatest project of his life: to transform his Florence home Villa di Montughi into “his museum”. The Stibbert Museum is home to a vast collection of around 50.000 works of art and antiquities mostly related to the military world and kinds of hunting, the most interesting of which is nineteenth century eclecticism.

The museum is spread around the different rooms in the Villa, four of which are dedicated to Japanese armoury: around 95 suits of armour as well as helmets, swords, weapons and various items of furniture, artefacts of great artistic and historical value that are part of one of the most complete and conspicuous collections outside Japan.

The “Japanese rooms” in fact recently underwent restructuring work sponsored by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, to return the rooms to their original glory and allow access to the priceless heritage they hold in a more enjoyable way. It was here that Targetti provided the entire lighting system.

In the frescoed room projectors on tracks from the STORE MINI range were installed: fixtures with an essential, compact design with an elegant black finish that have the dual function of providing general lighting as well as lighting the showcases.

In the room with majestic wooden lintels professional projectors from the CORO range were chosen. Installed on the lintels they are hidden from sight and light the armour and the objects on display with precise, clean beams.

A combined solution was chosen to light inside the showcases. On one side compact projectors from the OTTO range emit a controlled, modulated light using a manual focus that makes it possible to adjust the beam opening from 14° to 40°. On the other side on the wooden frame LED strips from the LED BELT range were installed to create a soft lighting effect.

Zonamerica in Montevideo is the first private free-trade zone in Uruguay. Conceived as a campus where the balance between architecture, nature and services stimulate connections, interactions and the creativity of the talent and companies who have established their headquarters there. Zonamerica provides services that range from construction design, architecture, infrastructure and technology.

Inside the complex, the office project is designed by the firm Dovat Arquitectos. The lighting design provided by Estudio Hofstadter, done largely using Targetti LED fixtures, responds to the needs of the customer to establish a continuous dialogue between the sober and coherent architecture and the formal simplicity of the space.

The linear system LOGICO in the recessed version with a flange was used both in the communal areas as well as in passage ways. Here it creates a discrete path of light that connects the different areas, providing continuity to the space and ensuring general lighting without sharp contrasts. Recessed fixtures POLKA and CCTLED ARCHITECTURAL Micro, with their minimal sizes provide the accent lighting  for the lower profile and private areas such as the niches that are used as working areas.

The same minimal mood inspires the office and conference room lighting where a balanced ratio of lighting is favoured between the linear LOGICO which lights horizontal work surfaces and the same LOGICO fixtures that focus on the vertical plane. Where a play of contrasting lighting was required for a more dramatic effect, the vertical walls were lit with small and high performance CCTLED ARCHITECTURAL Micro fixtures.

In the conference rooms a DALI control system ensures the possibility to manage different lighting scenes depending on how the space is used.

On the balcony in the Lounge area PANTHEON suspension fixtures were installed. With their appealing and modern design with soft lines without sharp edges, where light is diffused in an ethereal yet highly controlled manner, they contribute to creating the right atmosphere in keeping with the design of the space.

Formal and visual coherence, the primary requirement of the lighting concept, was obtained using recessed projectors with minimal visual impact and linear fixtures that come in a wide range of versions. This allowed for greater flexibility in terms of use: a technical yet at the same time decorative range that makes it possible to choose system configuration or stand-alone, the luminous flux and the type of recessed or suspension installation.