Technology: Lighting Two Museums
When two new museum buildings opened within days of each other in May 2009 - the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Brandhorst Museum in Munich - they demonstrated two subtly contrasted curato-rial approaches to the lighting of great 20th-century art. Both are designed by European architects - Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Chicago, and Sauerbruch Hutton in Munich - and both share a common lighting designer: Arup, based in London. At first sight, the primary top-floor gallery spaces in both buildings also have similar lighting solutions: panelised luminous ceilings across the full extent of each room, which provide diffuse and uniform light over the surfaces.
