Night at the Museum

Shed­ding Light: Cana­dian com­pany Lightemotion’s LED design for the Auck­land War Memorial Museum. Pho­tos: Simon Devitt.

Auck­land War Memorial Museum with new LED lighting.

Those tak­ing a night­time stroll (or per­haps sleep­ing rough) at the Auck­land Domain recently might have noticed that the old girl with the new lid is look­ing quite dramatic.

The reason for this is a new light­ing sys­tem devised by Cana­dian light­ing design com­pany Lighte­mo­tion and installed late last year with the assist­ance of Modus Light­ing. The sys­tem imple­men­ted util­ises 400 LED fix­tures, with each unit using between 50 and 74 watts. I haven't, and couldn't pos­sibly, do the math, but this is appar­ently about one per cent of the of the structure's yearly elec­tri­city con­sump­tion. Up to 24 light­ing dis­plays can be pro­grammed, but just three atmo­spheric dis­plays have been chosen by the museum to rotate through­out the night. Due to the sig­ni­fic­ance of the build­ing and its site it's prob­ably inap­pro­pri­ate to light it up like a Rus­sian dis­cothèque – although that option is now there. Check out this video, for example.

Auck­land War Memorial Museum with new LED lighting.

Auck­land War Memorial Museum with new LED lighting.

Front per­s­pet­ive of museum.

Front per­spect­ive of museum.

Front per­spect­ive of museum.

Auck­land War Memorial Museum – south­ern end.

Auck­land War Memorial Museum – south­ern end.

Auck­land War Memorial Museum – south­ern end.

Share/Save