This Future Museum covers nearly 3,000 square meters of exhibition space, spread over several floors. The exhibits themselves focus on the nature of work in the next 10 to 50 years, what cities will look like in the future and what will happen with the planet’s resources as some of the themes the museum aims to tackle. It also deals with the topic of aerospace, technology and their impact on society. The museum is split into five subject areas – ‘Work & Everyday Life’, ‘Body & Mind’, ‘System City’, ‘System Earth’ and ‘Time and Space’. The concept of juxtaposing science and fiction as concepts underpins the whole museum. The world of tomorrow is already waiting today at the Deutsches Museum Nürnberg.
Supporting architectural and exhibition themes was the main lighting design goal. Viewers perceive the rooms’ themes and displayed objects with the help of the light. Light lets the viewers understand the story behind each room. To achieve these ideas luminaires, luminaires positions, light angle, light colours and brightness are well orchestrated to create a clear and easily perceivable overall image.
In addition to the composition of the light, which creates the clear image to make the room and exhibits appear dramaturgically exciting and visually tidy, the integration of the technology into the environment plays an important role.
This exhibition light palette uses white light in different nuances: cold white floods for the room and warm white spot for the accents.
The cool room or daylight functions fill the shadow light. Objects should be perceptible from all sides. Colour-contrasting backgrounds separate exhibits from the space. In some rooms, in harmony with the theme other light colours like magenta and blue are used. More than 850 track light sources in harmony with many media installation and projections to create a characteristic atmosphere in each room.
The design of Future Museum lighting had many different challenges. Applying 48V DMX Spotlights with external control and power supply for better maintenance was part of that. Lighting control is centralized. It enables interaction between light, media content and visitors throughout the exhibition. In the Future Museum more than 2500 addressed parameters are controlled in uninterrupted dynamics via various interfaces.
The tracks were Positioned in two different levels: visible light battens set in accordance with floor graphics as key light at the bottom and spotlight level theatrically above.
The lighting design of the show cases was another challenge. More than 700 integrated luminaires were applied to present the showcases contents.
Reducing light reflection due to the abundance of glossy surfaces was another challenge.
