The Herta and Paul Amir Building at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art has a spiraling plan with two stories above ground and three underground. A 26-meter-high atrium has long windows slicing through its angled walls, allowing views into circulation ramps and galleries. Although the building is triangular in plan, the galleries are all rectangular allowing for orthogonal and parallel lines of track. Emergency lighting is inexpensively and creatively handled through flush white lensed fluorescent downlights that appear to be speakers when off. Although the interior geometry is complex, the lighting approach is simple. A rigorous, directional grid of omni-directional light fixtures is applied throughout, reinforcing the primary direction of travel, and illuminating all interior surfaces uniformly and softly. Lower ceiling areas, such as the Entry Lobby and Retail Shop, with flat, sloping ceilings utilize dropped cast acrylic donut lens fixtures, whereas higher ceiling spaces such as the Library have simple dropped globes, following the same grid alignment. A triangular grid of very small diameter white lens, flush LED in-grade uplights provide ambient light at the entry and look beautiful reflected in the specular white glass ceiling soffit. This same strategy is used at the very bottom of the 87-foot-high atrium, dubbed the “Lightfall” defining the lowest level and helping with the perception of depth three floors below grade. The tessellated concrete exterior façade is subtly revealed through clusters of spotlights strategically aimed from three high mast poles and handrail downlighting along an entry ramp. Soft interior spill light reveals the triangular and rectangular shapes of the façade windows.

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