The King’s Library at the British Museum

London

The King’s Library is housed within a principle wing of The British Museum forming the Eastern side of the recently completed Great Court by Sir Norman Foster. Originally the building had been designed by Sir Robert Smirke, in 1820, as a library to house King Charles III’s book collection and become the formulative step to found “a British Museum”.

With the transfer of the book collection to the new British Library in the early 1990’s it left the British Museum with a grade 1 listed space in need of renovation and a new use. Public display space always being at a premium, it was decided to restore the space to it’s original glory and use it as an exhibition gallery with the listed book presses finding a new use as display cabinets forming the back drop to a wide reaching collection of artefacts.

Extensive consultation with English Heritage and a set of stringent guidelines were established that ensured any new installation had minimal visual impact upon the space in terms of electrical hardware, and that intervention into the existing fabric would not be allowed for cable runs and light fixtures etc...Except where they could not be seen.

The lighting brief was developed with the client-working group to address key objectives of the final scheme. Primarily the space was to be lit to celebrate its architectural merit, but also to act as a high quality exhibition space. Existing daylight intervention from either side of the wing had to be controlled to avoid strong contrast and Uva / Uvb penetration of the artefacts. There was also a question of colour correction needed to overcome the interior effect of colour shift /distortion attributed to the Great Court glazing system visually unbalancing the symmetry of the gallery and providing an unwanted green hue.

The book presses required internal illumination that was completely free from both heat and UV radiation whilst at the same time did not require modifications to the historically important cabinet joinery and glazing. Finally the lighting system had to provide exhibition lighting, security lighting, emergency lighting and prove to be effective in terms of the Museum’s maintenance regime and access.

A careful balance of direct and indirect lighting was chosen as the approach for the architectural lighting layer. The window casements at balcony level proved the only place available to mount lighting equipment that wasn’t visible. Following a series of lighting trials it was decided to use a combination of CDM-TC Elliptipar uplights to uplight the ceiling plane, in conjuction with iGuzzini Radius uplights to light the window reveals themselves. These two treatments emphasised the ornate ceiling plasterwork and reinforced the rhythm and symmetry of the gallery at the same time counteracting the colour shift from the Great court.

After much discussion and lighting trials involving heritage groups, it was agreed that the coffered soffits of the window casements could be used to mount accent lights to illuminate the future statuary and freestanding exhibits.

This project won the Lighting Design Awards 2004 for the “Public Buildings” category.