Lighting for Galleries
and Exhibitions

Seoul Unfolded Architecture Exhibition

This was the first time back at the Korean Cultural Centre in London for our lighting designers after the UK national lockdown.

SMA's designers have provided many exhibition design services on 10 previous exhibitions at the Korean Cultural Centre. However on this occasion we only provided installation and lighting for galleries of the Seoul Unfolded Architecture Exhibition.

The exhibition curator required our lighting expertise on this exacting architecture exhibition layout. She was determined to have a different lighting feel and atmosphere to previous installations.

"High quality lighting converts the ordinary

into extraordinary!"

In order for our lighting designers to deliver on the curators expectation, it was necessary to fully understand the content and design layout of the exhibition.

The exhibition comprised of works from students and faculty of the Department of Architecture of K-ARTS. It analyses worries on how to coexist in the context of the city where extreme surroundings affect the choices of architectural design. The exhibition design is founded on key features of unfolding the gallery walls and laying them flat on one surface (similar to flattening a box). All surfaces had a continuous modular configuration that proved the positioning of each 2  & 3 dimensional elements within the exhibition space. Drop down floor to ceiling floating banners in the form of modular graphics were used around the galleries. This provided a floating and luminous influence to these displays.

After taking in all these considerations, our lighting designer suggested the use of wall wash lighting for the galleries. This would provide an even spread or wash of cool light across the galleries walls. Whilst the remaining 2D & 3D items would receive high quality museum spot lighting.

This spot lighting would allow the use of various intensities and beam angles especially useful when highlighting individual items. However the curator found it difficult to visualise these suggestions but wanted to explore it’s potential and fully understand what would be finally delivered.

Therefore to demonstrate our proposal for the lighting of the galleries we produced a mock-up using a lighting configuration of LED battens 6000K (Kelvin) for the wall wash lighting and 4000K (Kelvin) LED spot lights. The combination of spot lights and wall wash lighting for the galleries complimented each other perfectly which the curator was delighted with.

With this agreed it was fairly straight forward to implement the desired lighting installation.

It is essential for any art gallery or organisation that provides temporary exhibitions to equip its self with various types of flexible lighting. With it they can generate engaging, different & effective exhibition displays that will wow their visitors.

Happily since our involvement at the Korean Cultural Centre we have guided their exhibitions team to make little but frequent investments in new lighting hardware and controls. This investment in lighting equipment has resulted in 70% energy reduction but most importantly a dramatic improvement in the art exhibitions held in its galleries.

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