Tag Archives: lighting design

Tudors to Windsors: Royal British Portraits at the Maritime Museum now open

Our latest project: Royal British Portraits: Tudors to Windsors at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich has opened to very positive reviews. The Evening Standard‘s reviewer gave the exhibition four stars and described it as an unsurpassed way of conveying what actually happened over half a millennium, which is quite a feat for a single exhibition. The space has been thoughtfully divided into spaces for each of the major royal dynasties that have shaped our history from the Tudors to our present royal family, the Windsors.

The Royal Central website described the experience as carefully curated & beautifully displayed, with lighting that is soft and unobtrusive: quite a complex task when were faced with monumental works such as the iconic portrait of Queen Victoria in full Empire pomp that occupied an entire wall, down to the tiniest of portrait miniatures, carried across Europe to contract royal marriages as a diplomatic tool as much as a love match.

Due to the sensitive nature of many of the works, including the most fragile of early photographic prints and miniatures painted on playing cards, our biggest challenge was to create a lighting environment that could give each piece an equal weight and clarity despite the enormous range of sizes, materials, colours and even framing in use throughout the exhibition: this included lighting a light box to assist in viewing contrast and coping with the most reflective of modern photographic prints that we have yet encountered.

Each section of the exhibition was given its own colour theme to give a visual key to the changes of dynasty, and as each colour responded to light in a different way, we had to carefully balance each section so that the visual appearance remained consistent while keeping the light levels to conservation-suitable levels; the full range of the museum’s lighting stock was pressed into service for the scheme and to protect some of the most delicate miniatures, a responsive lighting system was developed for two key display cases that respond to visitor presence, so that the miniatures are only lit when necessary.

DHA Designs wins at Lighting Design Awards

We were delighted that our scheme for NEX Architects-designed Royal Wharf Pier in London has won the Best Public Realm Lighting Project award at the 2020 Lighting Design Awards.

We managed to beat some remarkable projects in the UK and worldwide to win this, so this was a great accolade for the scheme designed by Des O’Donovan. We had already been shortlisted in the Darc Awards for this project earlier in the year.

The scheme had to respond to the location, the use of materials, other river users & of course users of the pier to create a single, dramatic scheme that pulled all of these elements & requirements together into a fully-integrated whole.

Thank you to our suppliers (LEDLinear, iGuzzini) & collaborators who helped make this happen, and to NEX for their beautiful architectural response to the river.

We have a great track record with working with the NEX team: our previous collaboration was the remarkable Vardo Restaurant in Duke of York’s Square, London: here our lighting was shortlisted in the 2020 Restaurant & Bar Design Awards.

Jebel Buhais Geology Centre, UAE

Our exterior lighting scheme for the new Geology Centre in the Al Madam desert
was recently opened by the Sultan of Sharjah. We were engaged by the site’s architects, Hopkins Architects, to provide a dramatic lighting solution to the key geological features of the Jebel, so that it could be enjoyed at night by visitors to the centre.

Mindful of the nature of the project, we used as little power as possible to achieve the lighting scheme: 24 150W LED floodlights consume around 3.6KW, only 12% of the power recommended to light one single football pitch, but is used to light an area many times greater. By mounting the fixtures on the roof of the viewing gallery, visitors are unaware of the source of the light & by setting the fixtures to switch on at sunset, the change from day to night is seamless and visitors are unaware of the lighting until the daylight has gone and the Jebel is illuminated against the perfect darkness of the night sky.

By choosing to light the Jebel from a frontal approach, it also means that we have minimised spill beyond the outcrop, and are limiting wasteful sky glow. The scheme is part of an entire visitor experience, which shows the importance of the geology of the region and the story of some of the first people to live in the desert in the Neolithic period.

Pre-Raphaelite Sisters opens at the National Portrait Gallery

DHA Designs have just completed work on the National Portrait Gallery’s latest exhibition, the Pre-Raphaelite Sisters, featuring some of the most famous women in art. But unusually, this time the exhibition tells the story of the women who featured in the works – the muses, models, partners, artists & relations who inspired, sat for & even worked among this most famous group of artists.

The exhibition has received 4-star reviews in the Telegraph, Time Out & Evening Standard, who called it ‘riveting’ & ‘addictive’.

It is open from now until the end of January 2020.

More information, and tickets, can be found on the gallery’s website here.

Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries open at Westminster Abbey

DHA Designs have completed the lighting design for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries in the triforium space at Westminster Abbey. Set more than 50ft above the Abbey floor, the medieval Triforium has never been open to the public before. Over 300 treasures from the Abbey’s collection will illustrate the rich thousand-year history of the institution.

Read The Times 5-star review here.

Read The Guardian’s review here.

The galleries open to the public on 11 June 2018.