Targetti, as a company operating on the cutting edge of the lighting sector,
was selected by McLaren in 1996, in line with its strategy of making sure that
its partners in various fields of activity were the best in the world. Targetti
has developed optimal lighting systems for the McLaren Team garage interior,
motor homes and has been selected as an Official Partner to the McLaren Group
and Foster and Partners project to illuminate the McLaren Technology Centre,
home to the McLaren Group.
"The realization of a dream, our new corporate headquarters will be a place
for innovation and invention" - the words of Ron Dennis, McLaren Group Chairman
and CEO as he hails the McLaren Technology Centre on a fifty hectare greenfield
site in Woking, Surrey, UK. The McLaren building project, which will make architectural
history, was entrusted to Lord Norman Foster, a doyen in contemporary architecture.
Foster and Partners designed the new Hong Kong Airport and the Reichstag in Berlin.
The Partners were committed to making the building a manifesto of the McLaren
ethos and to represent state-of-the-art technology. Targetti was called upon
to provide lighting schemes for interior and exterior environments, the building
complex, the access routes and the lake. Participation in the McLaren Technology
Centre project is a success story founded on Targetti's seventy-year establishment
in the industry, reputation for R&D investments, development and production
expertise and sound business strategy, along with Targetti's prestigious credits
including Piccadilly Circus in London, the Bilbao subway, Leonardo da Vinci's
Last Supper, the old centre in La Rochelle, Milan Piazza della Scala.
Targetti enthusiastically took up the challenge of a sheer, multi-faceted project,
leveraging on its key strengths, and the ability to meet with vastly complex
requirements. Targetti's unparalleled product range perfectly fits a variety
of diverse environments, from manufacturing facility areas- including a futuristic
wind tunnel created for aerodynamics testing on 50 per cent scale car models,
to relaxation - restaurant, pool and gymnasium, and entertainment spaces - museum,
visitor center, conference room and exhibition areas. Targetti is specifying
a mixture of off-the-shelf, customized and specially designed products from its
own workshops. In association with architects Foster and Partners and US lighting
designer Claude Engle, with whom it has been part of the project since the design
stage, as early as 1998, Targetti conceived a dedicated solution for the McLaren
Technology Centre project. For the production areas and design offices, Targetti
has created a bespoke fluorescent system developed using microoptic technologies
to interact with natural light. Consistent with Targetti's philosophy, the Italian
way to lighting design, it is sophisticated, discreet and exclusive. It is the
outcome of advanced studies of the science of vision and the behaviour of photons
performed at Targetti's Optic Division and Photometric laboratory, in collaboration
with the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Ottica, in order to create innovative
reflective materials. The McLaren partnership is a unique opportunity for further
experimenting. "The McLaren Technology Centre is our Formula One. This challenge
has led us to technological breakthroughs we intend to employ in numerous future
applications", says Group Chairman Paolo Targetti .
Light infuses human environments with intensely functional and emotional value.
Introducing Targetti's illuminating concepts for its new technology ambience,
McLaren acknowledges that and Targetti's ability to harmonically integrate natural
and artificial light with unobtrusive and energy-efficient solutions.
"We're obviously thrilled at this project," says Lord Foster "
Everyone involved knows this is a unique opportunity to see what an industrial
building should be like in the next century".
http://www.targetti.com/McLaren/en