Byodoin Museum Hoshokan
- Japan
- Public Spaces
- Museums / Libraries
Bringing thousand years of history back to life.
Byodoin Museum Hoshokan
Byodoin is a temple built in Uji City, Kyoto Prefecture in the 11th century, and is registered as a World Heritage Site. The Byodoin Museum Hoshokan is a museum located within the temple grounds. This museum has preserved and exhibited priceless treasures, but was deteriorating, so a cutting-edge facility was installed in 2001, and it reopened as the Hoshokan, with an improved storage environment. It contains National Treasures such as the Door Paintings, Temple Bell, and Unchu Kuyo Bosatsu Statues.
The Temple Bell of Byodoin is a National Treasure and is known as one of the three great bells of Japan.
The chief priest had wished for many years to bring out its essence of beauty and worship.
To realize his dream, Panasonic made full use of our cutting-edge lighting technology to reveal the bell’s true face, which had not been illuminated in a thousand years.
Seeking a light to draw out the bronze coloring
National Treasure: Temple Bell
The Byodoin Temple Bell, a National Treasure believed to have been produced in the 12th century, revealed its bronze tones with cutting-edge LED lighting – a difficult task with conventional halogen lamps.
The LEDs used for this project were custom-developed by adding High CRI functionality to glare-reducing dimmable universal down lights (UDL). High CRI LEDs control wavelengths to reduce yellow hues compared to conventional LEDs, reducing dullness and bringing out green and blue coloration.
Repeated tests with multiple color temperatures allowed us to express color tones in the Temple Bell that could not be revealed with regular LEDs. Warm white light with a color temperature of 3500K produces the bronze coloration.
To enhance both the details and the Temple Bell overall
National Treasure: Temple Bell
The goal of this lighting project was to balance the expression of the individual details and the performance within the whole space. To express the individual details, lighting that sharpened the shadows brought the dimensionality of the patterns into relief. Meanwhile, the brightness of the Temple Bell’s background was reduced to portray the Temple Bell standing out within the architectural space.
The design used exclusive 3-D simulation software to achieve this. Going even further, we arrived at the optimal lighting by focusing on final adjustments at the actual site and visually confirming various patterns in the placement of installed devices, illumination angles, and more.
National Treasure: Ho’o Phoenixes
This pair of Phoenixes was created in the 11th century of bronze casting and forged plating, and exquisite designs are found all over their bodies, including the coxcomb and wattle on the heads and the scale patterns on the torsos.
This lighting renovation used spotlights on each of them, seeking out device locations and illumination angles to vividly portray these details. The light temperature of the LEDs is 3500K, the same as the bronze Temple Bell.
National Treasure: Unchu Kuyo Bosatsu (Bodhisattva) Statues
These 26 wooden Bosatsu statues, each looking in a different direction, with their own distinctive facial expressions and gestures, are illuminated with spotlights installed in the ceiling. 2 to 3 lights were used for each statue, and a process of on-site adjustments of device placement and illumination angles helped portray the shadows of the statues floating in the clouds, as well as each individual’s rich and complex expression and dynamism, while at the same time unifying them all into one “picture”.
The color temperature was set at 3000K to give the wooden objects a sense of warmth.
Byodoin Museum Hoshokan
- Client
- Byodoin Museum Hoshokan
- Electrical Construction
- KOUSEI-Engineering Co., Ltd.
- Dimmer Construction
- Panasonic Electric Works Engineering Co., Ltd.
