Lanterna
The emergency lighting serves to provide an adequate level of safety for persons that find themselves in a situation of power outage.
To guarantee effective safety of the emergency exits it is necessary to light them in an efficient manner. For this purpose the emergency lights and the emergency exit signage must be put into place.
Emergency lighting can therefore be integrated into the exit signage to facilitate the reaching of the exit routes and to indicate the position of the emergency devices.
The “Lanterna” came about as the result of the exigency to merge into a single, simple design object the sign and the emergency lighting and to reduce, within the building, the presence of anonymous lamps and of equally anonymous exit signs that are often unappealing, are not always indispensable, or redundant.
Lantern is a design object that conjugates the emergency functions with the quality of the spaces for which they are destined.
It is a speciality light that integrates two functions: the function of a luminous sign and the function of the emergency lighting.
It is an autonomous emergency device combining permanent and non-permanent lighting purpose.
The power supply for the light sources (battery) is contained in the device, as is the control unit, the light sources, the testing devices as required and the exit signs.
It contains two light sources; one serves for permanent lighting of the sign (normal and emergency) and the other exclusively for the emergency lighting.
Wherever information needs to be communicated in public spaces, the international ideogram language of pictograms liberates from the task of conjuring up texts and signs in different languages. By use of the permanently powered light source the symbols are visible even from a distance.
The Lantern can also be made, in addition to the autonomous version, for the centralised emergency lighting, with a battery or generator based back-up power supply.
The available versions are a square shaped sign (wall surface or flag mounted) or a rectangular sign (wall surface, flag or ceiling mounted).
The central body, or support frame, can be made with aluminium or synthetic material. The surface has polished or satin chrome finish. The control unit, the battery, the light sources are pre-assembled.
The top and bottom diffusers can be produced in either acrylic or glass. The white bottom diffuser is fixed to the support frame and cannot be dismounted. The top diffuser with green or red external colouring and etching is fitted into a support to which it is fixed by an interlocking joint. Pictograms, symbols or text can be reproduced on one or two sides.
Design
Massimiliano Gamba
2004
