Jüdisches Museum Berlin

Light as an actor, dramaturge and provider of orientation

The new permanent exhibition of the Jewish Museum Berlin has been open since August 23, 2020. More than 3,500 square meters were redesigned by the museum’s curatorial team and the exhibition designers chezweitz in cooperation with the architects Hella Rolfes and the lighting design office ENVUE HOMBURG LICHT.
Light is an essential means of creating orientation, staging exhibits and supporting Daniel Libeskind’s architecture.

The new light guide system accompanies visitors through the exhibition. It presents itself as a trace, as information in projections and in media installations. Moving light graphics, animated signposts and specifically used light letters lead through the building. Based on the dramaturgy of the exhibition, the lighting atmospheres vary greatly from room to room, but change fluently: from the subtle to the glaring glow of the objects and walls, through the focused illumination of the exhibits, to an artistically sophisticated light installation in the stairwell. Light becomes an actor, a dramaturge and a source of orientation.

With regard to the architecture, ENVUE HOMBURG LICHT took on the task of preserving monuments, so to speak, since they did not fundamentally replan the lighting infrastructure designed by Libeskind, but integrated it into the design. The entire lighting design is based on an intensive study of Daniel Libeskind’s architecture. The aim was to re-stage the existing rooms through the concentrated use of light.

Light in the new permanent exhibition of the Jewish Museum Berlin means the dynamic accompaniment of the visitor through Jewish history, staged in the field of tension between a varied scenography and the narrative architecture of the Libeskind building!

This project was nominated for the German Lighting Design Award in 2023!

Property: Museum
Builder: Stiftung Jüdisches Museum Berlin
Exhibition design: ARGE chezweitz GmbH / Hella Rolfes Architekten BDA
Photos: Alexander Butz for chezweitz GmbH, Joachim Grothus
Location: Berlin
Completion: 08 / 2020
Services: Light planning and consultation