For the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Greek Revolution and ahead of the opening of the exhibition ‘Beholding Liberty!’ at the Hellenic Parliament, we were assigned to upgrade the permanent lighting of the Hall of the Trophies and the Hall of the Adjutants to host the temporary exhibition of precious objects from the heroes of that time and paintings of various famous artists that were inspired by the Greek revolution.
Our lighting scheme upgraded the existing sconces and the ceiling spots, with more suitable lighting sources of higher CRI, always in respect of the architectural form. Additionally, for the first time we illuminated and highlighted the very important decorative mural of the 2 Halls: the Frieze of the Revolution in the Hall of the trophies and the Medals of the Heroes located in the hall of the Adjutants. At the first Hall, the frieze of the Revolution shows 20 representations of war and political-diplomatic events from 1821 – proclamation of the Struggle to 1833 – arrival of King Otto, while at the second Hall there are 14 portraits of Greek heroes, made around 1842-1843. For this exhibition event there are important objects and paintings related to the Greek revolution that are gathered together to be exhibited for the first time in these two rooms inside the Greek parliament’s building with the very significant mural.
Through our scheme, we paid a great care to the fragility of the mural paints as well as the preserved architecture of the interiors. Thus, for the wall-washing effect we customised a linear light with a special lens for wall washing from short distance and the overall size of the luminaire didn’t exceeded the 1cm. For the lighting of the medals / portraits of the heroes, we also used very small custom spherical spots with a special lens to focus on the circle and resulting in the least possible aesthetic distraction.
We also designed and used similar spherical spots including a thin louver for the lighting of the paintings in the stand alone structure in the middle of the first room. The CRI of all custom luminaires was over 95 to depict the slight shades of colour on the paintings and murals. The overall lighting scheme had to be adjustable as the exhibition is temporary.
Must be also highlighted that we pursued alterations to the decorative chandeliers in order to improve the position of the socket and correct the direction of the light bulb. Finally, a variety of different lighting scenarios was created through the use of a dimmable control system.
