Boxing Clever

The lighting at Bregenz Art Galley has been comprehensively refurbished for the first time in 25 years in order to give the interplay between light and space a contemporary light quality.

Photographs: Jens Ellensohn

Bregenz Art Galley was built in 1997 and is the work of leading Swiss architect, Peter Zumthor. It’s conceived as a cube that’s illuminated from the inside.

The exhibition spaces are lit by triple-refracted daylight, which is supplemented with artificial light by a lighting control system, depending on the weather and time of day.

The lighting has now been comprehensively refurbished for the first time in 25 years in order to give the interplay between light and space a contemporary light quality.

On the three upper floors of the gallery (Known in Germany as the Kunsthaus Bregenz or KUB), Zumtobel, who were also responsible for installing the lighting when the building was first fitted out in the 1990s, worked with the KUB building services team to replace 660 lamps with state-of-the-art LED luminaires.

One of the main challenges when replacing the lamps was the KUB’s special ceiling construction: to access the luminaires in the intermediate ceiling, the building services team developed a special construction that made the glass-pane ceiling accessible and the existing luminaires removable.

Zumtobel’s vision for the lighting refurbishment work was ‘minimalist but with the highest quality standards’.

For the backlighting of the glass ceiling in the exhibition rooms on floors one to three, the lighting experts built 660 special LED luminaires specifically to meet the KUB’s requirements. With 6500 Kelvin as the standard light colour and colour rendering of CRI > 90, the rooms are illuminated with daylight-like, uniform light that aims to minimise the difference between natural and artificial light as much as possible and to present the artworks in their true colours.

Zumtobel designed a special LED light insert with tunableWhite technology for the Kunsthaus Bregenz to upgrade the listed canopy luminaires in terms of technology and energy efficiency.

In order to bring the listed canopy luminaires on the ground floor up to date in terms of technology and energy efficiency, Zumtobel designed a special LED light insert with tunableWhite technology.

The appearance of the distinctive luminaires remains unchanged while the light quality increases: an inner and outer circle of light can now be activated separately using central controls and their colour temperatures can be changed individually.

‘The new lighting solution is extremely sustainable,’ says Manuel Staudinger, project manager at Zumtobel. ‘The luminaires were designed in such a way that they could be installed in the existing mounting points without having to spend time and money on adapting the infrastructure.

‘A great deal of energy can also be saved thanks to efficient LED boards with the best light quality.’

Arcos III zoomfocus with tunableWhite technology also provide high-quality accent lighting on the ground floor, replacing the existing spotlights. The lights can be focussed on the respective exhibits like a camera lens and immerses them in uniform, contrast-rich light.

The specially developed luminaires were installed in the existing mounting points without having to spend time and money on adapting the infrastructure.

With high illuminance levels, the spotlight can even overcome large distances in the room. In addition, its high colour rendering ensures that the exhibits are portrayed in a particularly realistic way. Last but not least, Zumtobel also updated the façade backlighting with powerful spotlights.

The KUB now enjoys better colour rendering, conservationfriendly LED light without UV radiation and lower energy costs. When combined with daylight linking, the gallery estimates that it will cut power consumption by over 50 per cent.