The new pavilion’s lighting creates an architectural weightlessness: balancing light-filled galleries over warm and energetic public spaces and sculpture grounds. Lighting follows the gentle curvatures, forming and tracing connections between old and new. Carefully crafted ceiling baffles diffuse daylight into galleries below, while indirect electric lighting ensures balance over the changing day and year. Outside of galleries, the dynamism of open gathering spaces transition to crisp drama in the punctuations of low-level exterior lighting and interplay of material and light in support spaces.
Internal warmth of the expansion draws the visitor’s eye inwards, contrasting under the opaque façade visually floating above. Within, the lobby opens into a double-height space, expressing the sweeping ceiling connecting to the existing atrium. Adjustable downlights, monopoints, and mullion-mounted spotlights pattern the ceiling to provide both soft general illumination and highlight artwork.
Within the skylight galleries, the sculpted ceiling modulates diffuse daylight while concealing its “source”: ribbons of horizontal diffusing skylights hidden above. Daylight is harnessed within the attic’s “mixing chamber” for soft light with subtle, diffused directionality through asymmetric baffles. The fully concealed cove luminaires supplement daylight for balanced indirect illumination throughout the day. Daylighting simulation and lighting mock-ups developed the baffles’ geometry, including a secondary diffusing lens to soften the light along the baffle interior, redistributing intensity otherwise concentrated along the top surface. Segmented runs of recessed track in the bottom of each baffle required careful coordination of lighting positions with other devices for a visually undistracting environment.
Within the existing memorial building, track infrastructure matches the expansion, allowing curatorial flexibility and consistency across exhibition environments. Sensorial excitement in support spaces including restrooms exchange the lightness of art spaces for the crisp drama of darker materials, accentuated by crisp lines of linear coves and graphic geometry of mirror lighting.
Public space excitement extends through various outdoor “rooms”, where low level luminaires invite visitors to explore with their guiding light. Highly varied sculptures are illuminated with a consistent family of aimable uplights, with interchangeable optics for consistency in operation and ease of maintenance. The building’s light spills soft illumination into exterior gathering spaces, keeping visitors connected as they explore the site.
