the world of Tim burton

design Museum

★★★★ Evening Standard
★★★★ The Telegraph

★★★★The Times

This major exhibition at the Design Museum explores the singular creative vision of Tim Burton.

Featuring hundreds of objects drawn from Burton's personal archive, the show represents the artist's creative output from childhood to the present day, focusing on the recurrent visual themes and motifs found in the distinctive characters and worlds of his art and films.

Beam worked closely with exhibition designers, Hara Clark, to develop an immersive scheme inspired by Burton’s unique aesthetic. Visitors were invited into a series of landscapes reminiscent of Burton’s filmography and personal history. Through considered use of light, Beam designers could play with shadow, colour and scale to evoke the mood and story of each space. 

To achieve these dynamic effects, designers created several large scale lighting features and bespoke showcases. In one section huge shadowboxes were fabricated, with each side of the 4 metre by 5 metre, freestanding structures representing a different Burton film. Lighting these large and shallow boxes posed a challenge so Beam conducted a series of tests to find the fixture and method that could deliver the clean wash of colour and crisp shadow required.  RGBW LED chip was used, mounted on a heatsink and then attached to the inner structure of the boxes, then linear LED was mounted top and bottom of the structure to wash the fabric front with a contrasting colour. 

In another landscape, inspired by film sets, designers sourced reclaimed film lights which were tested and restored. The fixtures were then rigged around the space on scaffolding, illuminating both the objects and the environment.