Austrian National Library – State Hall

Within a Baroque building lies an authentic architectural jewel commissioned by Emperor Charles VI and built between 1723 and 1737.

Today, the Austrian National Library is one of the most valuable libraries, with over 12 million items, 4 million are books. In the “heart” of the library, the State Hall (or Imperial Hall) extends almost 80 metres in length and rises to a height of 20 metres. Overhead is a dome frescoed by the court painter Daniel Gran. On the shelves over 200,000 volumes are preserved and on display for the public, including the collection of 15,000 tomes once belonging to Prince Eugene of Savoy and one of the largest collections of printed book on Martin Luther’s reform worldwide.

The State Hall and relative access staircase have been the subject of a major overhaul in terms of the lighting that has seen the Studio LDA in Vienna at the helm in collaboration with Linea Light Group. Helmut Regvart, studio founder and lighting designer, has created a project that involved replacing and restoring all the lighting bodies and relative electrical components (from the cables, ducts and distribution panels, through to the safety systems), with the goal of creating “theatrical lighting” through the installation of highly-effective solutions that are perfectly integrated into the building’s architecture.