PLACES:
Best Interior Lighting Scheme High Budget
WINNER
The Broad Museum, USA “Arup has been an amazing partner in the building of The Broad. They understand the sensitivities of building a space for a collection of contemporary art and helped develop efficient and innovative solutions for the physical and aesthetic needs of the institution.” - Joanne Heyler, founding director of The Broad. Drawing natural light into The Broad – Los Angeles’ newest museum – in a way that protects the art was central to Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s design. The building’s architecture is defined by the finely honed geometry of the solar path in LA. The entire structure, including the carefully calibrated veil and skylights serve as a light filtration device, bringing controlled natural light into the galleries. The skylights include blackout shades, enabling lower light conditions for all or portions of the third floor, giving the museum maximum flexibility to exhibit any medium of artworks. The top floor gallery is illuminated by expansive north-facing skylights and a fully-shaded glazed south wall. The skylights are configured
to allow filtered daylight while preventing direct sunlight. The natural daylight passing through the north canted light slots of the veil’s roof section create an absolutely even lucency right through the 23ft depth of the upper gallery. This passive daylighting approach means that daylight levels in the galleries will vary with the season, time of day and weather, altering the ambience of gallery interiors on each occasion a visitor walks around. Some exhibitions may require reduced light levels, either for conservation reasons (e.g. works on paper) or for display reasons (e.g. video works). Lower daylight levels can be achieved by the deployment of blackout shades – the shades can move between full deployment during closed hours to a pre-set position during open hours. For the electric lighting, Arup assisted with the development of custom track mounted LED wallwashers which are used to uniformly illuminate the 23ft gallery walls when daylight levels are insufficient. Several fixture reviews
were carried out to evaluate the performance of the luminaires in terms of light quality, distribution and levels of illumination. Energy savings strategies include the extensive use of the architectural ‘veil’ as an external shading device, harvesting daylight through the gallery spaces, and the use of low energy LED light fixtures. The museum was recently awarded a LEED Gold certification, being the first major art museum in Los Angeles to achieve such a certification and one of only a handful of museums nationwide to achieve LEED Gold Status.
Project: The Broad Museum Location: Los Angeles, USA Lighting Design: Arup, UK Client: The Broad Museum Architect: Diller Scofidio + Renfro, USA; Gensler, UK Lighting Suppliers: Litelab, Sistemalux