The easiest backlit panels ever, and they are made of stone
Fiat lux.
It’s sometimes hard to have people grasp all the possibilities a new product can provide, especially when its innovative potential is huge and you need to train customers to think in a new way, considering a solution that didn’t exist before. But the potential of our Pietre Luminose backlit panels was well and very quickly understood by Frank Theuerkauf design studio when, last year, they were designing a new bar in Hamburg and wished to insert in a precise area a dramatic backlit rear wall.
We knew the client was a very important one, and from our part we wanted to do our best because it was one of the very first projects we were approaching with a collection we had launched only a few months before, bringing on stage at Euroluce 2013 in Milan our very first range of backlit tiles. Yes, in fact they are more than backlit panels. They are backlit tiles, with a true jointless effect.
The concept is intriguing: every tile has its own, indipendent light box. This and their easy format allow for a much simpler and cheaper transport on site and, as regards the final result, for a much more regular and effective illumination than the one you can achieve with the usual, big onyx slabs, which are truly beautiful but require much more work in order to study a good and visually appealing support structure, and a perfect backlighting system. My support than consisted precisely in informing the designers on the many ways in which the ‘Le Pietre Luminose’ tiles are a true turnkey product: their standard 60×60 cm dimensions, their more than manageable thickness…. According to this, the surface destined to be covered was determined to be exactly a multiple of 60 cm, and the luminous structure was built into the wall, in order to lodge the modules concealing the broadsides.
In the end, I have to say that the installers were very prepared, too, and completed the installation with no problem at all.
This bar takes the name of ‘The Room‘ and turned out to be the ground floor club of the Radisson Blue Hotel in Hamburg. When we received the pictures I’m showing here, I got a a clear understanding of what designers mean when they talk about the “wow” effect. You know, I love to imagine a three-dimensional marble covering as a live pattern. You never see the same surface, the same veins, the same tile twice – varying the slant of light you may appreciate different effects, shadows come longer and shorter, and you always enjoy a different perspective on the wall. All this is magnificent but, if you think you can have a backlit 3d marble wall as well, it becomes gorgeous! And so, I seize this chance to thank again those who worked at finalizing this project, and contributed to show the ‘Pietre Luminose’ tiles to a wider public.
And if you wish to know more about the Naos wall texture featured in this project, download the technical card here!
Pictures courtesy of Frank Theuerkauf’s design studio.
