We were commissioned by Roger Tempest of Broughton Hall to design the lighting for the estates prestigious new building, Avalon Wellness Centre. Working closely with renowned designer Patrick Kinmonth we sought to achieve harmonious lit interiors to evoke a sense a relaxation, calm and beauty for the occupants.

The client and designer concept was to take ‘the source” as inspiration - an infinite orb that connects land and air.

The building is set into the sublime landscapes of Broughton Hall Estate in the Yorkshire Dales. The building has a symbiotic relationship with its natural landscape inviting into its interiors in the form of light, reflection and transparency.

We subtly used the symbol of the circle/orb as an infinite life and light source in various lit forms throughout the building. Natural materials were employed to provide depth, texture and natural warmth. The spaces are bespoke and offer no symmetry but, more organically deliver a soft diffused light where it is required.

Attention was taken to avoid glare and visual disturbance and working with the interior palette produced a cohesive sense of space and calm.

Client : Broughton Hall Estate, Roger Tempest, Paris Ackrill

Architects : Yiangou Architects

Interior Designer : Patrick Kinmonth

Command of the Oceans tells powerful, compelling stories of innovation and craftsmanship. It shows how Chatham Dockyard and its people helped lead Britain to worldwide influence.

It features two internationally significant maritime archaeological discoveries – the timbers of the Namur (1756), intriguingly laid to rest beneath the floor of the old Wheelwrights’ workshop, and an incredible treasure trove of archaeological objects recovered from the sea bed, from the Invincible (1758).

Architect: Baynes and Mitchell

Exhibition design: Land Design

The Dana Research Centre and Library combines the museum's Research and Public History Department with access to its library and archive collections.

A dynamic white lighting system shifts through cool to warm white during the course of the day within the canopy layers delivering harmonious and balanced spaces in daytime and evening.

The combination of daylight and artificial lighting create a harmonious glare free environment.

Architect: Coffey Architects

The Sir Joseph Hotung Gallery at 115 meters in length is the longest gallery in the British museum and displays its collection of Chinese and South Asian antiquities.

 We delivered a scheme that shows the beauty of the classical architecture and scale, creating a real sense of wonder on entering the gallery and delineating the space between periods and themes. 

 The central area around the oculus accommodates large groups of visitors that assemble  before being led through the gallery. This area is characterized by a more open, welcoming atmosphere with significant vistas down both halves of the gallery  - to the east, China, to the West, South-east Asia.

 We developed a strategy to control natural light with window screens, to keep the airy and open ambience that has always defined the space, but reduce the amount of glare around the window bays allowing more focus to the displays, giving clear priority to the objects in the visual field.

Luminance levels also had to adhere to conservation constraints so that in some bays works on paper could be displayed that had never had a place in the gallery previously.

The existing scheme was visually monotonous and appeared quite institutional. We wanted to create dramatic vistas but also use the bays to create more intimate viewing spaces. We took inspiration from the original decorative scheme of suspended lights and developed a new bespoke element in brass and a new laser cut stone technique suspending fittings at the entrance of each bay to provide a soft ambient glow whilst maintaining the luminance levels on the objects.

We replaced the existing track layout, using spotlights with high spec LED fittings that featured high CRI and glare control accessories throughout.

We collaborated closely with the designers to develop a bespoke showcase lighting strategy, considering the vast array of object types and sizes on display and designing bespoke solutions to allow each object to be seen at it’s best. Alongside we used slim LED light-sheet technology for the graphic panels to achieve excellent accessibility.

We designed a 100 per cent LED scheme to achieve the highest energy rating possible and  control is integrated in the case structure with maintenance and access details addressed accordingly.

Architects and Graphic Design : Nissen Richards Studio

The exhibition featured items worn by icons such as Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren and Gwyneth Paltrow in an exciting installation created specially for Somerset House.

Divided into three sections; including a private view of Valentino's world through photographs from his personal archive, offering an intimate portrait of the life of the master.

The exhibition then unfolded into a couture fashion show where roles are reversed with visitors walking the catwalk to view a over one hundred and thirty Valentino haute couture designs. 

The final section unpicked the painstaking processes of crafting couture exemplified by the stunning wedding dress of Princess Marie Chantal of Greece, demonstrating the beauty of the work of les petites mains who sew each stitch by hand.

Design: Kinmonth Monfreda

Graphics: Studio Frith

A Century of Style showcased the remarkable range of photography that has been commissioned by British Vogue since it was founded in 1916, with over 280 prints from the Condé Nast archive and international collections being shown together for the first time to tell the story of one of the most influential fashion magazines in the world.

Design: Patrick Kinmonth Studio

From Brunel’s 1859 steamship, the Great Eastern, to the launch of the QE2 in 1969, Ocean Liners: Speed and Style is the first exhibition to fully explore the design and cultural impact of ocean liners on an international scale, focussing on their promotion, engineering, interior design, as well as the lifestyle on board.

We worked closely with lead designers Casson Mann to achieve the narrative journey beginning at Dockside, to life on board, above and below deck. With the designers use of mirror we employed linear lighting to maximise scale and create depth and volume.  

Dropped ceilings were used to delineate period interior space. All details were finely worked up to create a visually impressive and cohesive whole.

We created artificial daylight from set-work skylights, abstracted art deco bespoke light fittings and for the finale a sparkling pool using powerful lensed linear cells under an enormous canopy of stars with our fibre optic design.

Design : CassonMann

Graphic Design : whynotassociates

AV Artistic Direction : Netia Jones

Hosted by Fort St Elmo, the National War Museum houses a superb collection of items which takes us back to prehistoric times. Artefacts are displayed in chronological order, commencing from the early phases of the Bronze Age around 2,500 B.C.

Two halls are dedicated to Malta’s important role in WW I, the Inter-War Period and Malta’s historical role in the Second World War. On display in these halls are perhaps the three most important icons of this museum: the Gloster Sea Gladiator N5520 FAITH, Roosevelt’s Jeep ‘Husky’ and Malta award for gallantry, the George Cross.

Architect: Forward Architects

Exhibition design: Land Design

The Feeling of Going is a visionary new stage work by British choreographer Ben Wright set to the mesmerising album Go, by SIgur Rós frontman Jónsi.

Working with Skanes Dansteater. Created in collaboration between Skånes Dansteater and Malmö Opera Orchestra and Chorus, Ben with his creative team staged the entire album.

The work was fully orchestrated by Jonas Nydesjö and had its world premiere at Malmö Opera in October 2013. It completed a second season as part of Scenkonstbiennalen in 2015 and in Autumn 2017 it will have it’s third re-staging. In 2018 this latest version of the work will be televised for SVT and other Nordic countries, in an especially produced film by Skånes Dansteater, Malmö Opera, 3 Minutes West and Stepping Ground. The lighting worlds we created ranged from the domestic to the epic and created a range from dawn to a sunset with fantastical twlights.

Choreographer:  Ben Wright

Design:  Will Holt

Costume Design: Theo Clinkard

Video Design: Finn Ross of FRAY

In 2014, the gallery opened its first outpost in London, located in a 11,000 square feet space over two floors inside a former factory warehouse at Golden Square; the architect David Adjaye renovated the space.

Architect: Adjaye Associates

Hair by Sam McKnight is the first exhibition to contextualise the wider cultural significance of hair and the role of the session stylist within fashion.

Sam McKnight has been instrumental in helping to create some of the most iconic images in popular culture from Princess Diana’s short, slicked back style to Madonna’s Bedtime Stories album cover and Tilda Swinton channelling David Bowie. McKnight’s work traces a vast array of movements and hairstyles, from nostalgic to androgynous, romantic to sexy, red to platinum, cataloguing the transformative nature of hair within the image.

Design: Michael Howells

Graphics: Amy Preston

The King's State Apartments are the most spectacular set of rooms in Kensington Palace. The beautifully preserved rooms, ceilings and tapestries give the rooms a luxurious aesthetic  and posed a unique challenge for the new lighting installation.

A combination of low UV impact LEDs were deployed, mounted in discreet positions and powder coated to blend with the historic interior.

Architect: Purcell

As lighting and video projection technologies converge ZNA increasingly develop moving image content as part of their offering.

Content shown includes material from World Wildlife Fund's annual Earth Hour project, Historic Royal Palaces Performing for the King exhibition and recent world tours by Placebo, Roisin Murphy and Jean-Michel-Jarre.

The new partnership was marked by a move in late 2016 to a new custom-built gallery at 26 Bury St., signalling a return for Colnaghi to St James’s after a hundred years in Mayfair. The renowned Colnaghi Library is installed at the heart of the gallery, while the Colnaghi Archive remains in the purpose-built archive building at Windmill Hill on the Waddesdon Estate, where it is more accessible to scholars.

Architect: Galata Studio

Design: Diego Fortunato

House of Style demonstrates the power of fashion and brings to life the captivating individuals from the Cavendish family.

Hamish Bowles, International Editor-at-Large at American Vogue, has curated this landmark show with creative direction and design by Patrick Kinmonth and Antonio Monfreda.

The exhibition features the wardrobe of amongst others:

Bess of Hardwick, one of the most powerful women of the 16th century

The 18th century “Empress of Fashion” Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire

Adele Astaire, the sister and dance partner of Fred Astaire

Deborah Devonshire and Nancy Mitford, two of the Mitford sisters, model Stella Tennant and John F Kennedy’s sister ‘Kick’ Kennedy.

Design: Patrick Kinmonth Studio

Designer Maker User features almost 1000 items of twentieth and twenty-first century design viewed through the perspective of the designer, manufacturer and user.

The exhibition, which includes a crowdsourced wall, covers a broad range of design disciplines, from architecture and engineering to the digital world, fashion and graphics.  

Design:   Studio Myerscough

Housing one of the most important and best loved collections in Britain the Institute required a sensitive refurbishment of the Fine Rooms.

A series of six salon-style rooms contain some of their finest artworks. The refurbishment included redecoration of walls and floors, new furniture and a completely new lighting scheme.

A collection of Picasso's works combining paintings, prints, ceramic, lithoprints, paper sculpture and sketches.

Fiber-optic systems were utilised in order to adhere to strict conservation controls, eliminating glare and allowing for a dramtic presentation of some of Picasso's most intricate work.

Designer: Seldorf Architects

Designated the National Collection of Sculpture, this collection concentrates on Western European Sculpture from the 4th century to the end of the 19th century. Highlights of the collection include masterpieces from the Italian Renaissance, ivory carvings of all periods, Northern European wood and other sculpture, commemorative medals and plaster casts.

This major show charted Bourdin’s distinguished 40-year career from Man Ray’s protégé to photography revolutionary in his own right. Exploring his pursuit of perfection, the exhibited works exemplified the craftsmanship behind his images, from production to publication, and their enduring quality as a consequence.

Curator: Alistair O’Neill and Shelly Verthime

This temporary, family-friendly exhibition allowed visitors to experience the most lavish entertainment of the early Stuart Court and discover how draughtsman and architect Inigo Jones created his remarkable masques. 

Audio visual content was created specifically for the event and portrayed still-lives, dance instructions and hand drawn animations based on the masques that were part and parcel of James I's court.

Designer: Tom Hadley

The new auction house for Phillips opened in Berkley Square in 2014. The project covered the interior and exterior lighting of four levels of the building and contained gallery, auction spaces, reception and conference rooms. All spaces had to meet UK listed building regulations and BREAM silver targets.

Architect: Aukett Fitzroy Robinson

Located in Mayfair, this 18th Century Georgian townhouse was transformed into David Zwirner's first gallery in Europe. 

Several centuries of renovations meant that extensive work was required to create rooms with proportions, lighting and mechanical systems required for the display of art.

Design: Selldorf Architects

A series of installations were set in both the landscape and buildings of Thorpeness, viewed by the audience in promenade which included a floating house in the middle of a lake.

Projection screens integrated with theatrical lighting acted as a backdrop for the main performance in the Ogilvie Hall.

Design: Pippa Nissen Studio

Cleveland House is a six storey building in London's West End. It is home to Rolex, amongst other prestigious companies. The lower ground floor was the focus of the project. 4000 sq. ft of vacant and underused space was re-modelled into a high quality office environment.

The high ceiling of the lower ground floor lent itself to the design of windows imitating the industrial style high-bay windows, along the wall of the open-plan office space.  

A series of fluid sets created differing visual worlds with arresting stagings which ranged from the intimate to the vast in scale for this emotive work.

Director/designer: Stewart Laing

Ten Plagues is a thrilling and unique music-theatre experience. Based on eyewitness accounts from 1665, Ten Plagues relates one man's journey through a city in crisis. "In London came the plague in sixteen sixty five. One hundred thousand dead but I live."

Director/Designer: Stewart Laing

Showcasing over one hundred exceptional jewels, jewelled artefacts and jades from the Al Thani Collection, this exhibition has pieces which range in date from the early 17th century to the present day. All were made in the Indian subcontinent or were inspired by India.

They include spectacular precious stones and jades shaped for Mughal emperors as well as a gold tiger-head finial from the throne of the South Indian ruler Tipu Sultan.

Design: V&A Design Studio

Faust’s world is set in a cinema where the backdrop acts as the lens of the camera, to zoom in and out from close- up to wide shot. Built architectural lighting gives the spaces an intensely  real, documentary feel, heightening and subverting the theatricality of the play.

Director/designer: Stewart Laing

The highlight of the V&A’s India Festival, The Fabric of India was the first major exhibition to explore the dynamic and multifaceted world of handmade textiles from India, spanning from the 3rd century to the present day. Showcasing the best of the V&A’s world-renowned collection together with masterpieces from international partners and leading designers, the exhibition featured over 200 objects, many on display for the first time. 

Design:  Gitta Gschwendtner

Graphics:  Studio Frith

The exhibition provides a unique insight into the emerging role of London as a world city, seen through the innovative perspective of Shakespeare’s plays. It also explores the pivotal role of the playhouse as a window to the world outside London, and the playwright’s importance in shaping a new sense of national identity.

This exhibition celebrates how our most famous playwright’s course never did run smooth, tracing the rises and falls in his reputation – from the Shakespeare adoration of the 18th century to Tolstoy declaring he was ‘in complete disagreement with this universal adulation’. The exhibition examines our cultural obsession with Shakespeare while exploring all the elements that make Shakespeare in performance so popular, including the origins of special effects, costumes, intriguing props and dramatic reinterpretations to suit the times. 

Design and Graphics:  Nissen Richards studio

This major exhibition explored the era-defining significance and impact of the late 1960s, expressed through some of the greatest music and performances of the 20th century alongside fashion, film, design and political activism.

3D design and graphics:   Nissen Richards Studio

ASSOS the Swiss brand founded by Toni Maier-Moussa in 1976 is a Road, Mountain Bike and Urban Cycling Apparel company known by many as the cycling shorts company.

Design:   Ab Rogers Design

This exhibition literally posed the question, What is Luxury? by bringing together objects all considered 'luxurious'. The differences in understanding what luxury stands for were reflected upon as each of the three rooms brought a new definition to the term. The production of exceptional objects was addressed to demonstrate the extraordinary investment in time and handmaking. The exhibition explored how attitudes to luxury are shaped by cultural concerns and personal dreams. and it challenged preconceived notions of value,  providing an opportunity for thinking about the future of luxury in the 21st century.

Design:  V&A design studio

For the first time the museum’s collection of extraordinary quilts and coverlets was displayed together with examples from some of the country’s finest regional museums. The exhibition showcased the skill and creativity involved in making highly complex and decorative quilts and bedcovers from 1700-2010.A

The exhibition showcased over a hundred pieces from her incredibly rich collection, one of the most important private collections of late 20th Century/early 21st Century British fashion design, now owned by Daphne Guinness. This included garments from the many designer talents she discovered and launched, such as Alexander McQueen, Philip Treacy, Hussein Chalayan and Julien Macdonald amongst others.

Design:  Carmody Croarke and Shona Heath

Graphics:  Graphic Thought Facilty

The gallery explores what a hominin is, the complex family tree of humans, changes in teeth, diet and lifestyles and how species of the past and changing environments have shaped today’s modern human. Latest scientific research includes new archaeological findings, advanced DNA analysis and the direct dating of bones and teeth.

Design: Natural History Museum Design Studio

Hair by Sam McKnight is the first exhibition to contextualise the wider cultural significance of hair and the role of the session stylist within fashion.

Sam McKnight has been instrumental in helping to create some of the most iconic images in popular culture from Princess Diana’s short, slicked back style to Madonna’s Bedtime Stories album cover and Tilda Swinton channelling David Bowie. McKnight’s work traces a vast array of movements and hairstyles, from nostalgic to androgynous, romantic to sexy, red to platinum, cataloguing the transformative nature of hair within the image.

Design: Michael Howells

Graphics: Amy Preston

Using the Gallery’s own collection, this exhibition investigates the development of altarpieces, looking at changes in form, style and type. It examines not only the evolution of their physical structure but also their relationship to their frames and to the monumental architecture that surrounded them.

Design:  National Gallery Design Studio

The NHM gift shop was refurbished to give the space a lighter more atractive modernist feel boosting sales by 5000%.

 Design:  Drinkall Dean

‘Hut 11A, the bomb breakthrough’ is a permanent exhibition at Bletchley Park and tells the story of the Bombe machines.

Housed within the Grade 2 listed Hut 11a, the exhibition traces the history of the Bombe machines, from its inception during technological arms race in Europe, to the minds which made the machine a reality and the vital intelligence it decrypted.

The narrative of the gallery creates a full scale, working, replica Bombe: a graphic design language of diagrams, infographics and new touchscreen applications sit alongside digital interactive and replica components, allowing the visitor to follow in the footsteps of a Bombe operator and get hands on with the bombe machine.

We worked closely with the designer Nissen Richards Studio to develop a lighting strategy that was coherent with the design intents and to realise a lighting scheme that could enrich the visitor journey, punctuating the rhythm of the space and at the same time giving maximum focus to the displays whilst adhering to strict conservation lux level on some of the more vulnerable objects.

The Hut itself is a Listed Heritage Building and so we could not make incisions into the building structure and the original suspended fittings needed to be retained.

We specified dimmers and used these at low intensity to create an ambient glow as a constant in the space. Along with the designers we developed a freestanding structure to carry all lighting equipment and cables inspired by the diagrammatic quality of early circuitry which also carried the graphic content.

We were able to seamlessly integrate linear lighting details as well as micro spotlighting.

We used a control system to add drama and dynamism with spotlights being activated by action and dynamic linear lighting pulsing from one area to another to lead the visitor through the exhibition whist also generating the sense of a living dynamic workspace as it once was.

In this way the historical is brought to life and the visitor can engage on many levels with the material both on an intellectual and sensory level.

All fittings were latest technology LED which used intelligently with the control system create a very low energy, low maintenance high aesthetic installation.

Architects and Graphic Design : Nissen Richards Studio

AV Design : FRAY

Into The Unknown : Barbican Centre

Into the Unknown: A Journey through Science Fiction is the genre-defining exhibition of art, design, film and literature.

Into the Unknown brings together artists, designers, filmmakers, SFX specialists, musicians and writers all testing the boundaries of reality through some of the most experimental works of all time. Curated by Swiss historian and writer Patrick Gyger, this festival-style exhibition explores the classic narratives of science fiction and presents them from a new, global perspective.

The exhibition takes you on an extraordinary journey, from the 19th century cabinet of curiosities to the vast vistas of space, through future cities and into the inner landscapes of human perception.

We designed a lit portal to act a portal threshold into the exhibition and then this was referenced as you passed throught the different sections of the exhibition. Time capsules with printed works were lit with some pulsating lighting playing on infinity mirrors. Concealed footights cast exaggerated shadows of the robots and models onto walls and ceilings and a feeling of abstracted axis and dystopia is created to support the exhibition narrative.

We took inspiration from scenes from science fiction films also on display creating a dynamic, dramatic display world.

Designers : Ab Rogers Design

Graphics : designbypraline

AV Design : Harmonic Kinetic

Camden Town steeped in its rich & often notorious cultural history is an established & enviable business location. Businesses such as Hugo Boss, French Connection, Condé Nast & Viacom have chosen Camden for their London headquarters.

Its streets are populated with a diverse retail offering including household names & independent boutiques catering for local occupiers needs throughout the working day.

Studio ZNA were commissioned to create a stunning reception and Atrium area for this prime commercial development.

Working with the architects we used warm brass finishes to contrast with the rough plaster and concrete.

We employed High CRI fitting with minimum glare to create warm pools and shafts of light that interplay with the surrounding surfaces. Linear lights were concealed within architectural details to promote a very sympathetic and high class aesthetic environment.

Treasures of the Mughals and the Maraja is a touring exhibition that celebrates Indian jades and jewels from XVI to XX century belonging to the Al Thani Collection.

Opened for the first time to the public at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2014, the exhibition then travelled to the V&A in London, the Miho Museum in Japan, The Gran Palais in Paris, Palazzo Ducale in Venice and finally to the Forbidden City in Beijing in 2018.

We worked closely with bGcstudio, who also designed the previous exhibition at the Gran Palais, to realize a lighting scheme that would make the jewels the masterpieces of the space, finding a delicate balance between ambient and display lighting.

The magnificent windows of the Sala dello Scrutinio have been partially blacked out, to control the natural light and recreate a more dramatic atmosphere. The lighting of the painted ceiling and walls followed the narrative of the stories, giving a sense of dynamism and excitement to the visitor, highlighting vistas and long views but always paying attention to the rendering of fine details on even the smallest display.

We developed a strategy to easily integrate and install new lighting into the existing showcases, using fibre optics and small spotlights to reduce the glare to the minimum. The entire exhibition has been designed with LED lights to contain power consumption and heating for conservation levels.

Architect : bGcstudio, Paris