Lighting as the foundation of architectural design: the journey with Piero Castiglioni
Cultural heritage, design method and continuity of the Castiglioni school
The meeting with Piero Castiglioni represents a founding and structuring step in Marco Petrucci's professional career, not only for the duration of the collaboration – active for over twenty years – but above all for the cultural and methodological value that it has transmitted. The contact took place during the period of advanced training at the Politecnico di Milano, at a time when Petrucci was consolidating a vision of light already oriented towards integrated design. From this meeting was born an ongoing collaboration that developed over time as a relationship of critical apprenticeship, design comparison and progressive sharing of a common language.
Piero Castiglioni is not only one of the greatest international interpreters of lighting design, but he is above all the custodian and continuator of a unique design culture, rooted in the experience of the brothers Livio, Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, absolute protagonists of the history of Italian design of the twentieth century. Through Piero, Marco Petrucci comes into contact with a cultural heritage that is not transmitted by manuals or codified rules, but by practice, observation and daily rigor of the project. It is the legacy of a school that has always rejected the self-referential object, favoring instead the relationship between use, space, perception and constructive intelligence.
In this context, light is conceived not as an effect or decoration, but as an autonomous design material, capable of defining space with the same dignity as an architectural element. It is a principle that has its roots in the research of the Castiglioni brothers, in their way of observing reality, of dismantling problems and recomposing them in essential, never redundant solutions. Through Piero Castiglioni, this approach translates into lighting design as a critical discipline, in which every lighting choice is the result of a careful analysis of the context, the history of the place, the materials and the methods of use.
The first assignment of great responsibility that sees Marco Petrucci involved in Studio Piero Castiglioni is the lighting redevelopment of the Milano Portello district, a vast urban intervention of over 250,000 m². This project represents a real test bench, in which light is called upon to operate on the scale of the city, contributing to the transformation of a disused industrial area into a new open and permeable urban system. Working alongside Castiglioni, Petrucci came into contact with leading figures in contemporary architecture and landscape – Gino Valle, Cino Zucchi, Guido Canali, Charles Jencks, Andreas Kipar – experimenting with a model of collaboration in which lighting design dialogues on an equal footing with urban planning, architecture and public space.
Another decisive experience gained within this association is the participation in the lighting project of the Imperial Forums in Rome, a site of universal value recognized by UNESCO. In this context, Castiglioni's lesson is manifested with particular clarity: light must not reconstruct what no longer exists, nor make the monument spectacular, but make the historical stratification legible, accompanying the gaze with respect and measure. For Marco Petrucci, this project consolidates a fundamental competence in the management of historical and archaeological contexts, refining the ability to operate by subtraction, luminance control and perceptual integration.
The more than twenty years of collaboration with Piero Castiglioni therefore does not represent a simple professional experience, but a continuous cultural path, which has contributed to forming a deep awareness of the "culture of light". In the studio, Petrucci learns and develops a method that considers historical, environmental and perceptual analyses essential before each intervention, exactly as in the tradition of the Castiglionis. Light thus becomes a tool for narrating space, capable of revealing without imposing, of building depth without dramatizing, of enhancing without ever overexposing.
Through Piero Castiglioni, Marco Petrucci indirectly inherits the thought of the three brothers: the radical curiosity of Livio, the design and ironic intelligence of Achille, the rigor and precision of Pier Giacomo. These values translate, in his work, into a practice of lighting design that rejects formal shortcuts and standardized solutions, favoring instead coherence, measure and design responsibility. It is in this groove that his professional identity is defined: not as an isolated interpreter, but as a conscious continuator of a school, capable of updating a profoundly Italian tradition to the complexity of international contemporary architecture.
Other About pages
This section contains the index of in-depth biographical and professional pages dedicated to Marco Petrucci, a Lighting Designer specializing in Lighting Design and Technologies. The contents trace his academic training at La Sapienza University of Rome and the Polytechnic University of Milan, the role of light as the foundation of architectural design, with particular reference to the path he developed alongside Piero Castiglioni, and the cultural and methodological legacy of the Castiglioni school.
The index continues with collaborations with international architects and studios, analyzed as forums for design dialogue and disciplinary integration, and with an in-depth look at the interpretation of space, understood as enhancing architectural identity and improving enjoyment through the perceptual control of light. The section concludes with a focus on regulatory rigor, technology, and sustainability, highlighting the application of international standards, lighting control systems, and light quality criteria as structural elements of the design process.