Advice/Opinion/Insight/Events/Case study/Customer care/Training MUSEUM LIGHTING
Live wire
Light at the museum
> The Oxford Museum of Natural History is housed in a Grade 1 listed building
The Oxford University Museum of Natural History recently reopened after a £4 million upgrade that has seen the restoration of the iconic Victorian glass roof and the installation of a stunning new architectural lighting scheme
By Andrew Brister
O
xford, the city of dreaming spires, boasts a plethora of architectural gems. Many of the city’s most stunning buildings form part of Oxford University – the oldest university in the English-speaking world – and among them is the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, the Grade I listed neo-Gothic building, designed by the Irish architects Thomas Newenham Deane and Benjamin Woodward and built in 1860. Among its most famous features are the Oxfordshire dinosaurs, the Dodo, and the swifts that have been nesting in the ventilation flues in the tower of the museum for many years. The iconic building has recently benefited from a major refurbishment and development programme that has cast the museum’s main court in a new light, both through the cleaning and replacement of some 8,600 glass tiles, but also thanks to a new state-of-the-art lighting scheme that was installed at the same time. The major work to the roof structure was originally to include minor works to increase light levels on the two main stairwells, but Oxford University’s Estates Services’ deputy electrical engineer Robert Gregg
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managed to secure funding to introduce a lighting scheme into the main court areas. “He wanted to develop something unique in the history of the building,” says Richard Francis, partner at Monard Electrical, the Oxford-based and NICEIC-registered firm that won the tender for the design-and-build contract. “The lighting project moved from small maintenance works to a substantial re-lighting project across the museum.” The end result comprises a combination of Zumtobel, Bega and Limburg luminaires, all carefully chosen and positioned to create a superb effect, while minimising visual intrusion.
Creative solutions The main challenge for Monard Electrical was how to install the lighting in a way that was sympathetic to the listed interior. The museum consists of a large square court with a glass roof, supported by cast iron pillars that divide the court into three aisles. Cloistered arcades run around the ground and first floors of the building, with each column made from a different British stone. The stonework and iron pillars are ornamented with natural forms such as leaves and branches. “We couldn’t drill into the pillars because of the listed status, so we came up with the idea of using magnets to attach the fittings and the
Summer 2015 Connections
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