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Lighting System for Extension to Morgan Library

The original buildings are now connected through a “square” accessed from the new Madison Avenue entrance (between 36th and 37th Street).

The extension was opted for in order to show more pieces from the amazing collection made up of 350,000 manuscripts, prints, books, drawings and seals, and to better preserve those pieces that are not shown but are nevertheless available to scholars. Piano created new galleries, a naturally-lit reading room, a wide underground space to store the works of art and an underground auditorium seating 280 people.

The lighting project was developed by RPBW and Arup, which studied the integration between the two lighting types in particular: natural and artificial.
Natural light plays a major role. Artificial lighting is hardly used wherever natural light is present in the environments. To illuminate the different spaces, Le Perroquet fittings were chosen from the very beginning. They are generally used to supply accent lighting.
In the underground areas where fragile paper materials are exhibited only artificial light was used. Thanks to a well-balanced use of the light sources, suitable quantities of fittings and special filters, an illuminance level of 30 lux was ensured.
The Le Perroquet fittings were installed on tracks in an indirect lighting system that was designed specially for this project. In the auditorium they were used with a new hinging system that makes the use of couples of luminaires possible.

iGuzzini contributed as a technical sponsor to the lighting system of the Morgan Library by offering both the fittings and its designing know-how.