Church of San Gaetano Catanoso

The new church of San Gaetano Catanoso is the first in Italy to be built on land confiscated from the ‘Ndrangheta. After three decades, this symbol of faith and legality was finally able to be built. Its arresting white structure emerges among the anonymous buildings on the outskirts of Gioia Tauro. The church possesses a minimalist, yet powerful architecture, primarily due to the combination of the three large parallelepipeds and a sparse, almost bare interior.

For the purposes of the lighting design, the vast interior space, virtually absent of decorative elements, represented the most demanding challenge. The nave of the church is over 40m long and 16m wide and as many metres in height.

The two lateral colonnades act as visual anchors, while the apse is illuminated from the bottom by a vertical window.
The rest of the natural light comes from a series of skylights in the wooden-trussed ceiling.

To preserve the architectural simplicity, cylindrical LED projectors in Corten finish were developed specifically for the project. A series of 53W and 40W luminaires with 52° optics were installed at the intersecting points of the beams to uniformly illuminate the central hall. The same fixtures, equipped with 15° and 26° optics, illuminate the presbytery area, subtlety emphasising the altar, the ambo and the Celebrant’s Seat.

For the area of the Baptistery, located near the entrance to the church, a 26W luminaire was used. This same wattage was used to accent the baptismal font. The weekday chapel was illuminated with a similar wattage. Here, artificial light is integrated with daylight and is filtered through two ceiling slots.

PRODUCTS USED
Exenia: Museo projectors, integrated into cylindrical shapes with on-board power supplies. The resulted in low-luminance optics and COB sources with luminous fluxes of 6500 lumens.