Immigration Museum
Immigration Museum, Flinders Street, Melbourne
The Old Customs House on Flinders Street is one of Melbourne's most significant heritage buildings. Built between 1858 and 1876, its grand Ionic colonnades and vaulted Long Room speak to the weight of the institution it once served.
Today, as the Immigration Museum, it houses the stories of people who journeyed from every corner of the world to make Victoria home. Personal objects, oral histories, photographs, and multimedia installations fill two floors of gallery space, each exhibit a fragment of someone's life, preserved for the people who come after.
In 2023, Lucretia was commissioned by the Victorian Government to design and deliver the exhibition lighting for the museum's galleries. It was a brief that called for something quite different from a retail or commercial fitout. The goal was not to sell or impress. It was to help visitors feel.
Getting the geometry right before anything touches the ceiling
Before a fitting was ordered, Lucretia modelled the full gallery scheme in DIALux. Shadow analysis confirmed the optimal track position relative to the walls, and lux-level mapping verified that illumination would be even across all exhibit surfaces. For a 150-year-old heritage building where structural changes are restricted, getting the geometry right before anything touches the ceiling is not a formality; it is the work itself.
The Lucretia team also visited on-site with a sample case of luminaires, testing options in the actual space before committing to a specification.
A gallery-grade fitting with snap-on filters
The system used the Venus Art Gallery Track Light, a gallery-grade fitting with a snap-on interchangeable filter system that moves between tight circular spots for individual artworks, square beams for larger works, and a wide wall wash for even background illumination.
One system, two scenes
From the same hardware, Lucretia designed two distinct lighting scenes to give the curatorial team real flexibility over the gallery atmosphere.
Track spots aimed directly at each artwork: high contrast, dramatic, individual. Each piece commands its own pool of light against the surrounding dark wall.
Wall washers run dimmed as a soft background layer, with focal spots above it, for a warmer, more enveloping atmosphere suited to mixed-media and text-heavy exhibitions.
Scene 1 or Scene 2
The same gallery modelled in DIALux under each scene.
Every show that follows
The two-scene approach also future-proofs the space. As the Immigration Museum's galleries evolve, with new touring shows, refreshed permanent collections and community exhibitions, the system is already configured to accommodate change without redesigning the lighting from scratch each time. Good exhibition lighting serves not just the show that opens, but every show that follows.
From the design presentation
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