The Museu Picasso is one of the places of Barcelona which attracts more people. As well as offering clear cultural contents of unarguable recognition, it is also a place of urban reference where the city exhibits, explains and represents. A building where many periods and architectural styles of major historic and patrimonial interest live together.
The lighting of the building on the one hand should provide support to the natural light during the day in those spaces of gloom, and during the night place the building on the map of the nighttime landscape of the city, showing off the beauty and giving it the opportunity to provide identity to the neighbourhood where it is located.
Courtyard of the Baró de Castellet. Photo: Virtual Tour to the Courtyards of the Picasso Museum
The new lighting project that we are talking about in this case is not the museographic illumination, but consists of the lighting of the other spaces, where the visitors walk, move and communicate with the building. This is a documentary illumination that aims to the show the building with its own character, it is functional because it refers to the passage areas, and also representation because it deals with the lighting of the courtyards and interior façades.
Passage areas. Photo: Virtual Tour to the Courtyards of the Picasso Museum
The lighting of the new proposal aims to improve some aspects such as the visual comfort, the energy efficiency, and the uniformity, by offering contrasts where it is considered interesting to highlight architectural elements.
The presence of lamps and apparatus in settings of these characteristics is an issue of major importance, and for this reason we propose a unique solution, a system that covers all the needs. It is a stable geometric element, with clean shapes and dark colours.
It is an element with a considerable presence, we are not trying to hide it, quite the contrary: by means of a solid presence it is sustained and integrated in the environment, and it becomes a unifying part of it without trying to become mimicked.
Courtyard of the Aguilar. Photo: Virtual Tour to the Courtyards of the Picasso Museum
The lighting of the courtyards, on the other hand, will be more architectural, in the sense that the general area will be illuminated by means of some more notable architectural surfaces or supports, and the lamps illuminating specific architectural elements will be hidden or integrated into the architecture itself.
The change in the illumination will be subtle in terms of the visual impact in general, but what will really be transformed will be the atmosphere.
Maria Güell
La Invisible Lighting Design Studio
Related Links
Virtual Tour to the Courtyards of the Picasso Museum
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