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PROJECT / RIJKSMUSEUM, AMSTERDAM , THE NETHERLANDS
The Special Collections have found their home at the lower level where the lighting design is the most theatrical.
Photo: Roos Aldershoff
We clearly understood the shortcomings of this choice: dimming tungsten means colours start to fluctuate across the gallery, and maintenance and heat gain would both be intense. However, we also felt that it would be too risky to specify LED. It was 2005, and although LED technology was progressing fast, there was not much known regarding its damage factor and colour rendition did not quite satisfy us. All these discussions, with Igor, with the Antonios and with Marleen Homan of Wilmotte were fascinating for me, and gave me a sense of really being involved in the project. Besides that it was like going back to school and learning something new every day.
When I walk now through the Rijksmuseum, I see quite a different lighting solution compared to what you have just explained... That’s right, but this makeover was done only later. In 2006, Arup submitted our vision as well as our detailed daylighting design. This included geometries of the laylight louvres and performance specifications for the various layers of glass and diffusion that together make up the daylight solution. This daylighting design has been realised exactly as it was designed, and I remember some lively discussions because we had to convince the
museum team of the appropriateness of it. We proposed a semi-dynamic, or should one say semi-static louvre system: it can move, but it really moves only four times a year during the transition from one season to the next. The museum was interested, but they also considered a fully dynamic system that would be responsive to sun and sky illuminance levels. But Florence and myself were convinced that the visitor experience would ultimately not benefit from that.
Why not?
All these gorgeous paintings made during the Golden Age of Holland greatly rely on one phenomenal natural source of energy: light. The landscapes have the dramatic skies of Holland, and in the interiors, such as Vermeer’s ‘Milk Maid’, the artist shows a real strong feeling for light and its shaping properties; sometimes even as the main protagonist in the painting. How beautiful and relevant would it be, to connect the visitor’s observation of these artworks with the reality of the natural environment outside the museum today? I explained to the museum staff and Wilmotte that a continuously adjusting daylighting control system would not only be needlessly expensive; it would also attenuate the illuminance variation in the galleries as well as the brightness of the laylights to levels that would be so reduced
that most of the time one would not even notice the variations. One could argue that a system like that would disconnect the visitor from the reality outside the building. It would be exactly opposite to what I had in mind. I also remember Andy Sedgwick, who is an Arup Fellow and one of the most experienced museum building designers in the world, joining that conversation with the museum to explain the benefits of the semi-dynamic system that we proposed. Looking back I am very glad that the daylighting design got realised the way the Arup team developed it. It gives this unique experience of ‘reality’, and one can really relate to some of these magnificent artworks thanks to the natural light. This light puts the art in such a recognisable environment! Many galleries in the museum have no daylight but those that do, their beauty makes up for other spaces missing the skylights.
And how did the artificial lighting design evolve?
In 2006 we submitted our vision in an elaborate deliverable of some fourteen books or so. It’s such a big building! We proposed built-in showcase lighting and track-based suspended accent lighting - both were omitted later. But as I said, that was for the better, because the advancement of technology in the field
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