The Harris Museum | Preston, United Kingdom

The Harris is one of Lancashire’s most recognisable cultural buildings, home to museum, gallery and library collections under one roof. The Harris Your Place project has transformed the Grade I listed landmark into a vibrant, accessible hub where art, history and community meet.

Working alongside exhibition designers Ralph Appelbaum Associates, we developed a museum lighting strategy that unites the museum and library into a coherent, intuitive visitor experience. The lighting supports RAA’s vision of a blended cultural environment, balancing the building’s civic character with moments of intimacy, discovery and interaction.

Our work spans all interior spaces, including galleries, library areas, atrium, café and public zones. The design enhances RAA’s spatial and interpretive narrative, creating a sense of rhythm and hierarchy while respecting the building’s historic architecture.

Adaptive Lighting Design for Listed Museum Architecture

A key focus was minimising physical intervention with the listed fabric. Track lighting was used extensively to reduce the number of power points and provide a flexible, adaptable infrastructure. The system integrates ambient, accent and emergency lighting within a single coordinated framework. Linear uplights within the track help provide general illumination, maintaining visual coherence across the diverse range of spaces.

Showcases feature linear LED systems designed to deliver even, controlled light across rotating displays. This ensures appropriate museum lighting conditions for a wide variety of objects while maintaining conservation standards.

To complement the flexible track system, we introduced pendants and localised focal lighting that provide visual punctuation throughout the building. These moments help define zones within the larger, blended environment, drawing attention to key exhibits and gathering spaces such as the atrium and café.

The DALI control system offers long-term flexibility, allowing lighting scenes to be easily adapted as displays evolve or new uses emerge. This ensures that the building remains responsive to changing curatorial, operational and community needs for many years to come.

Balancing the civic grandeur in architecture with light

Lighting plays a quiet but integral role in The Harris’s reimagined visitor journey. It helps to balance the civic grandeur of the architecture with the warmth and accessibility central to the project’s community-driven goals. From the restored Rotunda, anchored by the suspended Foucault Pendulum, to the newly conceived youth and community galleries, lighting reinforces atmosphere, clarity and engagement at every stage.

The collaborative and community-focused nature of The Harris project is symbolic of our wider ethos at Michael Grubb Studio. We believe that light should connect people with place and purpose, while also contributing positively to environmental goals. Our design for The Harris combines technical precision with adaptability and energy efficiency, supporting a sustainable future for this civic landmark.

The result is a unified, contemporary museum lighting scheme that supports The Harris’s transformation into a cultural space for all. Through a carefully coordinated design approach, light is used not only as a practical tool but as a means of connection, linking history, people and place through the renewed life of this civic landmark.