Studio ZNA worked with exhibition designer Sam Brown of the V&A Design Studio and graphic designer Martin McGrath. Opening in February 2023 this is the first major UK exhibition devoted solely to the Renaissance master, the exhibition featured many works that had never been on display in the UK before, seeking to explore Donatello’s unique place in the history of art within the cultural context of 15th-century Italy and other artists working at the time.

The inspiration for the design was the Florentine architecture of the Renaissance, cities designed around piazzas open public spaces joined by tighter street forms. 

This was translated into plan of areas and vistas of open airy display and areas of enclosure that were darker and of higher contrast. This  further developed to an interior architecture housing objects  found  in domestic or sacred interiors, with warm candle-like colour temperatures. Then always opening up to a central display of large outdoor sculptures in the more luminous piazza type spaces.

Amanda Levete designed the new Sainsbury wing gallery and for the first time since it opened in 2017, due to conservation requirements, we designed a scheme to enable half the rooflights to be opened to allow daylight to penetrate the space below.

We then mimicked this effect of daylight by up lighting the roof structure above the other piazza open displays to create modulations of more diffused light, in cooler colour temperatures, as you journey through the space. We used daylight sensors connected to Bluetooth light sources to control the amount of artificial light falling on the objects and change this in correlation with the amount of daylight to ensure exposure levels remained within conservation targets.

The design, though simple, evokes the Florentine classical architecture of arches and columns which we highlighted to add rhythm to the transitions from outdoor to indoor. The structure was built to be demountable with a  re-useable metal framework.   This was wrapped in various densities of scrim to allow for a range of transparencies, the lighting again was used to create more solid architecture by front lighting the scrims and more translucency by lighting objects more brightly behind.  Bespoke lighting was designed for showcased and integrated setworks to best render the detailing of these exquisite works. Particularly challenging were the shallow marble reliefs where we balanced a grazing light with diffused source to render the work without creating hard any shadow lines as these would distract from the fine line work.

The lighting and the lightweight architecture work together to create a series of spaces that are sometimes public and other times more private spaces. An effective choreography between objects and environment - a lit journey through space with points of focus and drama.