Our Wondrous Planet is a permanent exhibition at Melbourne Museum, spanning 1,800 sq.m, and is an immersive exploration of global biodiversity organised into four biomes: reef, soil, rainforest, and ice.
Visitors move through large-scale projections, interactive media, tactile installations, and more than 800 animal specimens. Rather than rows of glass cases, the museum wanted an experience that felt expansive, atmospheric, and emotionally engaging.
The museum brought Additive – founded in 2013 by theatrical lighting designers Bosco Shaw and Paul Lim – onto the project specifically for that theatrical sensibility. Shaw’s team was responsible for the complete lighting design, concept development, detailed documentation, and installation oversight. The challenge was to create lighting that felt dynamic and expressive while still meeting strict conservation requirements. Lux levels had to be tightly controlled, fixtures needed to be maintainable in the long term, and every decision had to account for a 10- to 15-year lifespan.
The museum’s in-house spatial design team works primarily in Rhino, and much of the exhibition design was issued as detailed 3D models rather than traditional drawing sets. Additive converted Rhino models into Vectorworks, preserving geometry and textures. The museum shared internal documentation, conservation guidelines, and evolving models, allowing Shaw’s team to give feedback early and often.
One early concern was glass reflection in large showcase displays. For a life-size elephant named Bong Su, the museum provided a full 3D scan of the specimen. Shaw used Vectorworks alongside Twinmotion to produce detailed renders and storyboards showing how reflections would behave inside the showcase.
Those visuals made the issue immediately clear: “Our renders actually triggered them to upscale the spec on the glass to low-reflective glass,” Shaw said. Without this early concept work, the exhibit may well have faced unseemly lighting issues that betrayed the vision for the space.
The soil biome’s suspended mycelium network was one of the most complex elements in the exhibition. Inspired by fungal root systems and underground communication networks, the installation evolved from early sketches into a fully abstracted lighting feature made from LED pixel tape.
Shaw’s team worked through 2D concepts, 3D models, and renders to resolve cable paths, dropper locations, access for maintenance, and the way light and shadow would interact in the space. “We had to model this completely in 3D so that we could understand where all the cable runs were going,” Shaw said.
The final installation uses around 240m of COB pixel tape and fills the ceiling with slowly shifting patterns of light.
Shaw used Vectorworks Spotlight from early planning through construction and commissioning, building detailed 2D and 3D drawings, schedules, and reports that tracked hundreds of fixtures across the four biomes. In total, the exhibition included roughly 530 gallery fixtures, 380 showcase fixtures, and a wide range of integrated backlit elements. While there were only 11 core fixture types, those expanded into around 70 variants once mounting methods, optics, accessories, and use cases were considered.
For visualization, Shaw paired Vectorworks with Twinmotion for fast, client-facing renders and walkthroughs, while using Vectorworks’ built-in Renderworks when he needed to closely check lighting behaviour. That combination allowed the team to move quickly without sacrificing confidence in the technical outcome.
For Shaw, the project represents both a milestone and a shift in his own and his firm’s direction. It pushed Additive further into permanent installations and museums, and it reinforced the value of bringing theatrical thinking into new contexts.
“Don’t be afraid to apply what you know,” he said. “If it works in theatre, it can work elsewhere. You just have to be willing to push it, document it properly, and see it through.”
