The Project
Lightsource Studio were asked to provide a bespoke lighting design for the new National Famine Museum located at the Strokestown Park House & Gardens, Co Roscommon.
Lightsouce engaged directly with the design team and specifically with the interpretation design plan produced by Tandem Design, and developed a lighting scheme that would work with the interior exhibition galley of the Famine Museum as it was redeveloped into a thematic journey.
Our lighting design had to take on board the overall concept within each of the museum zones including physical interactions, music and audio interaction along with ensuring clarity for the visitor interaction.
The Lighting
Lighting Plans, Renders & Calculations
Here we have a detailed lighting plan for each of the exhibition spaces in the museum. With emphasis on drawing the eye to the important exhibits and illuminating artefacts throughout the museum, a selection of professional lighting was proposed by the design team at Lightsource Studio. Subtle yet high quality and high powered options were selected as you can read more about when we discuss the lighting.
There was a strong emphasis on lighting controls for all zones; specific attention was needed to allow the lighting levels to be commissioned with each zone to suit the interpretation concept. This involved using specific lights with a high CRI that could be individually dimmed and focused during the pre-commissioning and final commissioning stages of the project in conjunction with the museum curator teams. Specific focus was on maximum lux levels at particular museum.
Above (left) is a render produced by Lightsource Studio to help visualise the lighting effects and outputs of the specified lighting for this area. Above (right) is a photograph of how the proposed lighting scheme became reality. The design team at Lightsource Studio were thrilled with the end result. I think you can agree that the accuracy of the render versus the reality is extremely good.
Above, we can again see the render of zone one of the museum versus the reality of how this area turned out. Backlit boards encompass the area while high output track spot lighting illuminates the large wooden columns that project from the ceiling.
The lighting system selected was a mix of recessed and suspended track with individual & specific LED track mounted adjustable lights, along with high output surface mounted LED strip that was installed within the museum fit-out furniture and displays. We also selected continuous runs of LED lights to
be suspended over specific displays and pathways.
Part of the lighting design required the lights to automatically interact with displays and to be set on a pre-programmed sequence of dimming down and up to work along with display freezes and audio & visual equipment. This would then be timed to allow the tour guides to control for visitor interaction.
The lighting selected for the project came from a variety of our brand partners along with a control system that was fully set up and implemented by the technical team at Lightsource Studio.
As part of the project master program Lightsource Studio committed to ensuring that the set up of the on-site lighting would be completed with minimal disruption, to ensure this happened we programmed in an off-site pre-commissioning time to allow our in house technical team to fully address and program each individual light prior to being delivered and installed. Each individual light and driver was labeled and a coordination lighting plan was provided for the installer to work from, this allowed our technical team to reduce on-site commissioning and keep within the tight master program for the project.
Our on-site commissioning was closely coordinated with the Irish Heritage Trust teams and the installation contractors; we worked on-site alongside the fit-out teams to allow final positioning of all lighting with specific emphasis on the integral museum furniture lighting that the interpretation design plan produced by Tandem Design was created for.
