Auckland Museum

Around the outside of the Museum the exterior has been lit with colour changing RGB fittings. The fittings chosen for this part of the project were iGuzzini Linealuce and Tagada fittings.

“We were thrilled with the result that iGuzzini produced”, says Mike Thorburn, Managing Director of ECC. “Our own beautiful Auckland Museum now joins other great buildings of the world lit by iGuzzini such as Piazza Duomo in Florence, the Cathedral of Resurrection in Saint Petersburg and the National Museum in Beijing.”

Museum electrician Paul O’Donnell says the Linealuce fittings combine high lighting performance with great energy efficiency and reduced installation and maintenance costs.

“We’re also achieving really precise, defined colours and the reach of these lights is very impressive. The Auckland Museum building is very large but it is properly saturated in colour with the iGuzzini lighting," says O'Donnell.

The luminaires have an innovative optic able to produce a wall washer effect with very even grazing light and capable of reaching heights of up to 18 metres. The distribution of the LEDs inside the luminaire allows the creation of continuous rows without areas of shadow between modules.

“The electronic control gear enables a uniform delivery of the light flow right across the Museum which is what gives the lighting such great impact.”

The Atrium has also benefitted from the upgrade. ECC flew samples of the existing fittings to the iGuzzini factory in Italy where moulds of the casings were made. By adapting the new iGuzzini Tagada LED uplight to custom fit the old casing, ECC was able to modernise the lighting in the Atrium with minimal impact to the flooring.

There are many benefits of the new Tagada RGB LED fittings. There is an immediate cost saving in terms of reduced wattage required by the 24W LED lamps, and long term savings in maintenance over the life of the lamp which extends up to 100,000 hours. The reduced heat generated by the LED lamps ensures that they are safe to walk over, which solves an issue with the lamps they replaced in the Atrium.

The benefits of the lighting are also being felt by the rest of the organisation.

“Lighting the building with the incredible clarity and colours we can now achieve is offering us another way to reach out and connect with our communities,” says Auckland Museum Director External Affairs, Tourism and Sales, Megan McSweeney. 

For the Museum’s events team, the lighting provides an opportunity to offer commercial clients something extra and, for their own events, the range of colours is already being used to create different themes and moods.