Prize(s) Winners in Visitor Experience & Museum Exhibition
Lighting Design/Product Company Studio ZNA
Lead Designers Saumya Monga
Other Designer's names Zerlina Hughes
Architecture Company OMMX
Interior Design Company OMMX
Client Victoria and Albert Musuem
Photo Credits Max Creasy
Other Credits Kellenberger-White, Setworks Ltd, Father Sound, Wild Island Films, Manolo Blahnik
Completion Date 20th September 2025
Project Location Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Entry DescriptionMarie Antoinette Style is the UK’s first exhibition dedicated to the French queen, exploring her bold fashion identity shaped by youth, notoriety, and a distinctive aesthetic.
The lighting immerses visitors in her flamboyant world, using shadowplay and decorative effects to evoke theatre, grandeur, and glamour. Collaborating with exhibition designers, we crafted a bespoke experience across seven rooms, drawing on Versailles and her life. Varied lighting techniques establish a unique mood in each space.
The exhibition opens with a glimpse of splendour before the Hall of Mirrors, where lighting mimics a candlelit chandelier with dynamic reflections on walls, floors, and mirrors suggesting infinity. Using reflective discs from a previous exhibition clusters of gold and silver sequins hang from cables, illuminated by low-glare downlights and DMX-controlled fittings that twinkle with the soundtrack.
In the garden scene of Le Petit Trianon, the Temple of Love is softly lit by a diffused ceiling lightbox, with mini spotlights highlight details while preserving a 50 lux conservation level.
The Death Room offers stark contrast: low-lit, quiet and chapel-like, reflecting imprisonment and execution.
The show ends in a glowing contemporary fashion space inspired by grottos and lakes, set at dawn with pink light and reflections evoking morning sun on water, closing on a celebratory note.
Sustainability ApproachAll light fixtures specified are LED, with many using dynamic white controls to allow flexible reuse for future exhibitions. We prioritise using fittings already in the museum’s stock to minimise waste, and work with technicians and manufacturers to upgrade existing equipment with high colour-rendering LEDs. In this project, old halogen Toucan spotlights were retrofitted with LED SORAA lamps to extend the life of the fittings.
The bespoke chandeliers also demonstrate reuse: 600mm Dibond discs from the V&A’s Fragile Beauty exhibition were adapted to form the top structure, with incisions added to house a central spotlight and suspend reflective sequin strands.
Any new fixtures purchased for the show were sourced from UK manufacturers. We maintain detailed records and provide deinstallation guidelines to ensure these fittings can be easily reused in future exhibitions.
