NORMA

With NORMA our gaze is once again fixed on the East, but this time the Orient is filtered by the evocative fascination of early-20th-century Vienna. The large gilded sphere is in fact made up of hundreds of light "laurel" leaves, a clear citation of one o

f the most important monuments in the history of 20th-century architecture, Joseph Maria Olbrich's Secession Hall in Vienna. While in Vienna it was sunlight that made the gold shine with a thousand sparkles, here the light is filtered from the inside. It

is a softened light, the glow of an opera house, of velvet-lined theatre boxes and flowing dresses. NORMA is a "polemic" chandelier with contemporary lighting-design, which is often cold and excessively revealing. NORMA instead projects a sense of myster

y, concealing more than it exposes. The laurel leaf harks back to the far-off times of heroes and poets, from the Plains of Olympus to the bard D'Annunzio. And unexpected glass protrusions twinkle in the dark.