Located in the main square of Città di Castello, the medieval tower of the Umbrian city has been recently renovated within a comprehensive urban restoration and environmental improvement project promoted by the local municipality. This suggestive tower still retains in its interiors some ancient stone walled coats of arms and a trace of the fresco that the Priors commissioned to Luca Signorelli in 1474. Built in the thirteenth century for military purposes, the Civic Tower, also known as the “Torre del Vescovo“ as it stands close to the former bishop’s palace, it was also used as a prison. It has a rectangular shape of 6,10m x 6,80m and a maximum height on the front side of 39.80m, for a total of 7 floors. Its current exterior appearance is the result of many successive collapses and renovations that occurred over the years, as witnessed by its different masonry texture. An earthquake struck it in March 2007, causing a differential settlement which has further increased the already detected and monitored slope of the tower towards the square. 
 

After the completion of a major engineering plan aimed at ensuring the total safety and stability of the tower, the city council decided to complete the external renovation with a low environmental impact lighting system that should be able to deliver a new appearance to the old building at night. The company in charge of the lighting project, Enel Sole S.r.l., turned to Griven in order to receive a complete report based on the demanding project specifications. The lowest number possible of LED fixtures was required and they should also have to illuminate exclusively the tower surface and not the adjacent buildings without exceeding the restrictive legal luminance limits.

Moreover, the lighting system should deliver a wall grazing effect on the surface of the tower, a uniform colour changing scheme based on monochromatic tones dynamically alternating according to different scenes and programmes. GRIVEN’s lighting designers, in cooperation with Enel Sole S.r.l, forwarded the complete protocol in a record time, complying with all the demanding project requirements while delivering a beautiful lighting effect. In order to achieve the final result, a powerful but at the same time extremely compact unit was required. Therefore, 10 Zaphir in RGBW colour configuration with either elliptical or elliptical wide optics were chosen to provide the required effect. Displaying a number of intuitive features with immediate and full access to all functions, a LED D.O.P. controller, completed by a wireless DMX signal transmitter and a DMX signal receiver, was required to seamlessly manage the whole system. 
 

Developed for refined architectural lighting, ZAPHIR RGBW features 40 RGBW power LEDs, that are capable of delivering a remarkable performance from an extremely compact unit. The combination of RGBW LEDs offers an unprecedented astonishing white light output quality, as well as a wider variety of intermediate colour hues for an even broader range of application purposes. The comprehensive selection of optics groups available makes this colour changer suitable for a variety of lighting installations which require maximum photometric flexibility. Its capacitive touchscreen display allows for a direct access to all on-board functions. Relying on the electrical properties of the human body, this capacitive display can be controlled with very light finger touches  while it cannot be accidentally operated by external agents. The full digital control system, obtainable from any five-channel remote DMX512 control desk, includes also stand alone functions implemented by pre-configured colour sequences and master/slave mode for multiple units synchronization. The Polar Edition features an integrated de-icing system with electrically heated glass, which assures a comfortable functioning even in the utmost severe cold weather conditions.

Installed products:
4 x AL2355A Zaphir RGBW with elliptical wide optics and barndoor

6 x AL2354A Zaphir RGBW with elliptical optics and barndoor

1 x AL1422 LED DOP Controller

1 x AL3364 IP65 wireless DMX transmitter

1 x AL3360 IP65 wireless DMX receiver