Revolutionary Cells

‘We want to make our solutions flexible and bespoke but, at the same time, easy-to-use,’ says Matteo Reggiani of the eponymous family-run Italian lighting brand. Indeed: easy-to-use and cheerful, but also technically sophisticated and modular – a design completed, as it were, by the consumer – Cells is the latest lighting fixture designed for Reggiani by London studio Speirs + Major. Without meaning to be, Cells – part poetry and part science, bold but versatile – is an apt representative of the recently reinvented face of the Reggiani brand.

The design of Cells was inspired by the cellular (and perhaps just a little bit magical) structure of a dragonfly’s eyes, in which clusters of lenses have evolved to work together to shape light in various specific ways. Its square graphical form is as vividly hued as nature, too, with coloured plates that can be inserted over the LEDs inside the fitting to alter its look in a cost-effective way. In a luminaire, the insect’s massive, globular eyes, which cover almost the entire head, translate into a clever modular network of much larger lenses that also shape and direct light.

Kitted out with powerful LEDs paired with clip-on reflectors that can be configured in diverse ways, the luminaire is able to distribute light in a variety of ways, as context requires. Speirs + Major applied the cellular structure to both the lens network and to the optical cover of the fixture, which makes the fitting stronger, improving its impact resistance. Which means that Cells, as its name suggests, is many things in one: sturdy enough for use indoors and out, mounted on surfaces or recessed into ceilings and walls, installed in high-traffic or neglected urban areas like stairwells or underpasses (being both tough and affordable). Cells’ advanced control optics may be complex, but they look simple and give users a broad range of functionality, from diffuse, ambient illumination to more customised, targeted compositions.

This versatility, a blend of low-tech and high, nature and artifice, singular and plural, maker and user, expresses Reggiani’s new openness, in general. In this spirit, London agency Dalziel+Pow bestowed on the company a deep, 360-degree new brand persona – including a revamped logomark, colour palette, typeface and tone of voice, packaging, trade-fair booths, and even a film. The refurbished logo represents Reggiani’s fresh emphasis on collaboration with customers, lighting designers and professionals, architects and engineers: an open-stemmed ‘R’ has displaced the brand’s former closed sphere.

In fact, this collaborative, outward-looking character is boldfaced more explicitly under the company’s new tagline, ‘the illumination collective’, which suggests that its expertise, inspiration, dynamism and creativity are being fuelled by a network of ‘partners’, much larger and more dispersed than the company personnel alone. The simplified brand colour scheme – black, white, yellow – clarifies and places the focus on light, shadow and the human lives shaped by both. ‘We have, now, a renovated personality in both style and substance, a brand-new face,’ says Reggiani, the company’s Corporate Strategic Officer and part of the third generation of the family that has run the business for six decades. ‘It’s not just a new dress to wear, but a real revolution in our inner personality, a deep transformation process which has generated a new Reggiani, a brand which derives its strength from its historical heritage, but which is now entirely projected into the future and ready to take on new challenges.’

These watershed changes were sparked, so to speak, by the challenges facing the entire industry, radical changes driven by advancing technologies like LED and the need for more precise, and often remote, light interfaces driven by consumers instead of the contract market. Reggiani, for instance, have recently added new product extensions for residential and architectural lighting that offer Bluetooth solutions, connected to an easy-to-use application that is available on Google Play and in the Apple Store, because clients are starting to demand smart, but simple, devices to control their fixtures.

‘What is happening today is probably one of the most exciting changes in the technical industries,’ Reggiani says. ‘Light technology and its evolution are confronting big changes in the use of smart control solutions, mobile devices, software and applications. These big changes are also connected to the cultural habits of the people using these devices and the technology connected to these systems.’ As it has been with laptop computers and smartphones, so it is with lighting fixtures, which are getting smaller and smaller in order to suit new and multiple applications, both connected and wireless.

‘Our rebrand is connected to these changes,’ Reggiani explains. ‘The real challenge is to educate the end user because the benefits of good lighting are becoming even more accessible to the consumer. As they must: light is deeply connected with people’s well-being, and so are the technology and the portable devices that can now control it. And so the importance of lighting is growing, because it will begin to affect people’s everyday habits and experiences more and more and more.’

© Architonic