Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism

Munich, Germany

exhibition

Photo © Jens Weber

exhibition

Photo © Atelier Meinhardt

exhibition

Photo © Atelier Meinhardt

illuminated table-element

Photo © Atelier Meinhardt

library

Photo © Jens Weber

hall

Photo © Jens Weber

main stairway

Photo © Jens Weber

4th floor plan

Drawing © Conceptlicht

Museums + Galleries

Lighting Designers: CONCEPTLICHT

Location: Munich, Germany
Year: 2015
Client: Landeshauptstadt München
Architect: Georg Scheel Wetzel Architekten, Berlin
Team CONCEPTLICHT: Eva Lechermann-Wollscheid, Helmut Angerer, Tanja Erk, Martin Möller, Jan Nielsen, Annette Roller
Award: Deutscher Lichtdesign-Preis 2016 - Honorary Prize Museum

The Munich Documentation Centre for the history of National Socialism is a memorial place and a place for learning, whose architecture is dominated by clear geometric structures. Its utilization is organized by exhibition areas with generous air spaces, as well as seminar and function rooms in the basement floor and offices in the top floor.
By applying linear stringent light bands, integrated in the acoustic panels of the ceiling, the lighting concept adapts the main architectural features. This is in addition underlined by the linear arrangement of the bus bar. To achieve a steady appearance of the ceiling, spotlights are only positioned in selected areas and as reduced as possible. The media in the permanent exhibition is predominant illuminated uniform by plane LED backlight. To achieve a unity with the dominating material concrete at the ceiling, the walls and the grounds of the building, the luminous colour was defined as neutral white.

The luminous colour for the general lighting also was held in neutral white. Only the places of learning and the hall in the basement floor receive a warm luminous colour, adapted to the wooden surfaces used.

The illumination generally is held contained, to give room for the architecture and the exhibition. By using lamellas at the general and stairs illumination the inherent luminance of the luminaries is reduced. The spotlight selection is also embossed by its fade-out characteristics. Blind frames and framing attachments avoid reflections in the glass surfaces of the table elements. Therefore the exhibition comes to the fore – not the luminaries.