EE, the UK mobile network operator and internet service provider, has developed a new retail store concept with leading UK retail designers Dalziel & Pow. dpa lighting consultants were appointed to develop a new lighting concept for the flagship stores and for the second tier store roll-out. The first flagship store, known as EE Studio, is in Westfield, White City, in London.

The retail offer from EE covers many elements, and a vibrant and immersive store concept was developed to excite and engage the customer and lead them around the store on a journey through the full offer. This included a ‘digital spa’ where customers can spend some time switched off from their connectivity.

The Westfield store has a double-height frontage, the ‘Welcome Zone’, which has enabled D&P to create a dramatic and imposing entrance and lounge/waiting area (Basecamp). This is enhanced with self-illuminated and suspended brand features, comfortable lounge furniture for meet and greet, and consultation. The ceiling of the store which then drops down to around 4 metres is created with a grid of circular sound absorbing discs.

Throughout the store, D&P have developed a display and hanging system utilising a scaffold pole system. The lighting is designed to be completely flexible, therefore tubular lighting track to the same size and finish as the scaffold poles is integrated through the system to provide both ambient and display illumination. The intention is that the lighting system is very effective but visually discreet. There are many different pieces of display furniture around the perimeter and in the centre floor; many of these also have integrated lighting for display and feature effect.

The store is split into a number of zones such as a series of residential room sets, a flexible central stage area, a gamezone, tech innovation display, and digital spa as already mentioned. A fully flexible lighting control system is programmed to have different lighting scenarios for each zone, and these are in turn interfaced with the store audio visual system. This is all used by the store consultants to illustrate the flexibility of everything that EE has to offer their customers and promote excitement in the brand, leading hopefully to a purchase!

As would be standard, the light fixtures are selected for optimum light quality and glare control, all fixtures are fully dimmable for scene setting. The spotlights have a special colour finish to match the overall concept.

Client: EE
Interior Designer: Dalziel & Pow
Photography: Courtesy of EE

This Qatari outpost of the famous Harvey Nichols Brand is located in a mall within Doha Festival City and is positioned over two large area floors. As with any high-end fashion department store the floors are split up not into distinct zo,nes with their individual look and feel, but with consistency in lighting approach and light quantity.

Since the floor areas are generous the floor to ceiling heights are relatively high to retain good spatial proportions for the store. Typical ceiling heights were 4 metres or slightly more. At the time of the store design and construction, LED light sources were not sufficiently powerful or with consistent light quality to use within the ceiling ambient and display fixtures. Therefore we opted for co,mpact metal halide reflector lamps, Philips Mastercolour, to give us the appropriate illuminance levels, brightness contrast ratios, and colour rendering quality necessary for such as project.

All lighting integrated into the display furniture or within interior design features was LED, and with this combination we were able to optimise energy efficiency for the lighting installation. Ceiling lighting was specified to be as discreet as possible either recessed into ceiling roughs or as very compact adjustable recessed and plaster-in downlights.

Flexibility was key to the project and this was why we opted for track and spot lighting as the main ambient and display lighting solution. We worked closely with the Interior Designers Studio Four IV to integrate all lighting as discreetly as possible and to achieve the best lit effect for all the details. Mock-ups and prototypes were carried out as necessary. Special attention was placed on the VM locations to provide added impact and visual interest with the use of suspended light features and ceiling details.

Our simple sustainability aims were to use only energy efficient light sources throughout that would provide the appropriate light levels and light quality for the store parameters. All light sources are LED and compact metal halide. The personal shopping area has some dimming facility but the main store areas are switched only, but in groups that can be selected for store open, store closed, through the night security.

Retail Designer: Studio Four IV

dpa lighting consultants were commissioned at the beginning of 2020 to help develop a lighting concept for a brand new retail store roll-out for Sky.

Working closely with the Sky in-house design team, retail designers The One Off, and other specialist consultants a completely new store design concept was developed. Working with the open ceilings and exposed services a flexible high level lighting solution was integrated, which provided a varied light pattern with focused highlighting of the product displays and a comfortable, warm, ambient effect. Specialist experience booths were developed with dimmable and automated lighting. There are numerous integrated lighting details to accentuate the interiors and provide visual accent and interest at the lower level. The hero pieces are two feature pendant installations, each consisting of multiple pendant globes. Each globe is independently addressable to provide pre-programmed lighting sequences with white lighting, and RGB colour change for special events.

The Westfield White City store was the first flagship site to be completed in December 2021.

Client: Sky
Retail Interior Design: The One Off
Photography: Courtesy of Sky

dpa lighting consultants were delighted to be commissioned by Vashi to design the lighting of their new flagship store in Covent Garden London, working closely with the client body at Vashi, DECON Project Management, Mythology from New York and architects Tanner Design.

We developed the lighting scheme as an integrated part of the interior.  Vashi has brought the craftmanship of a jewellery workshop into the retail space, closely interacting with customers for an unique experience. The lighting responds to the various spaces within the store, creating a variety of different areas as illustrated by the various images.

Client: Vashi
Creative Studio: Mythology
Project Managers: DECON Project Management
Architects: Tanner Design
Photography: Courtesy of Vashi

dpa were proud to work on this ’boutique’ flower shop located in the Box Park retail district of Dubai.

We worked closely with London based interior designers Universal Design Studio to develop a multi-layered and highly controlled lighting solution for each of the small zones within the store.

These zones comprised the main shop and display area, the consultation area, the refrigerated flower storage room, and the preparation room. All these spaces could be viewed by the customer.

One of the challenges with this project were the space parameters in that the plan dimensions were quite small in comparison to the height. Additionally there is an open ceiling such that the lighting had to work around the other services. A suspended track and spot solution was used with a very narrow beam lensed spotlight to accent the displays with negligible stray light. This allowed for excellent ambient and display lighting within the space constrictions. A second challenge was the refrigerated room for the flower storage which has a patterned glass wall to show the flowers to the customers in an abstract way. The temperature is required to be 4 degrees to keep the flowers fresh and we detailed the lighting to show the colours through the glass with also a decorative lighting element. Additional decorative lighting was applied throughout the store to accentuate a luxury residential feel. All light sources were very high quality warm white LEDs with spectrum suitable for high colour resolution of the flowers and interiors. Also a dimming system was employed to tailor the lighting for daytime and nightime as the store stays open late in the evening.

Client: Fine Blooms
Interior Designer: Universal Design Studio

Jack Barclay London is part of the H.R. Owen Group and is the world’s oldest and largest Bentley Dealership, established in 1927. This historic showroom is situated within Mayfair’s famous Berkeley Square.

Architectural practice Louis de Soissons have worked closely with Bentley to design their showroom interiors and invited dpa to develop the lighting for the refurbishment of this flagship showroom.

The lighting was designed carefully to create an environment where the cars look their best both inside the showroom but also from the street where kerbside appeal is imperative. Within the showroom various zones exist where variety and focus to the particular requirements of the space has been coordinated and considered in detail. For example, the Personalisation Room where customers consider and select finishes, colours and leathers to create their perfect Bentley requires appropriate light levels and excellent colour rendering. Decorative lighting over the central café bar and trimless recessed linear lighting in the ceiling add distinctive lighting elements which all form part of the identifiable Bentley branding, whilst the main feature pendent or ‘Hero’ Light is in prime place in the main window facing onto Berkley Square. This gives maximum impact to a special vehicle selected to receive this focussed attention.

Also part of the same group, the neighbouring showroom is home to a single Bugatti car where the particular elite supercar on display is presented in this striking interior. The lighting complements the style of the brand and interior with concealed linear lighting in colour and an appropriately comfortable and luxurious guest lounge.

Project Credits:
Client:  H.R. Owen PLC
Architect:  Louis de Soissons Ltd
Electrical Contractor:  HEES Ltd
Photography:  Courtesy of Richard Washbrooke Photography
dpa Project Team:  Nick Hoggett – Partner and Ian Clarke – Associate

Lighting Brief

Located in City Walk. dpa were responsible for the lighting design for all entrances, central atrium, internal circulation/retail and the external facades, working initially with Fitch, London on the Concept Design and Chalhoub Group Creative Department, 3D on implementation and through to completion.  dpa also provided an advisory role for many of the tenant units, providing review, comment and sign off on the lighting design in line with Chalhoub Group’s standards document.

Challenges

Comprising 10,000sqm of retail space, 300+ designer brands spread across three floors, the project was completed in approximately 12 months.  dpa spent hundreds of hours on site, coordinating with the client, project Consultants, Contractors and Manufacturers to ensure the design intent was realized and the final lighting installations were technically sound and aesthetically pleasing despite the numerous on-site changes imposed during installation.

Level Kids is a unique concept and a universe for parent and child. Upon entering, the guest is taken on a sensorial retail journey starting from the ground floor being  ‘the crystalline waters’, first floor being a ‘flowering desert’ and second being a ‘enchanted sky’. These are enhanced by several special feature areas: ‘enchanted walkway’; ‘skywalk’, ‘shoe safari’ and a number of unique ‘icons’.  Additionally extensive use is made of media screens, with bespoke content developed by KIN design London, and back-illuminated ceilings.  The lighting design is integrated with, and re-inforces, these diverse elements.

Given the diversity of visual attractions and features it was important that the ambient and display lighting was visually neutral, and was not intrusive, ensuring the feature elements are visually dominant.  To achieve this a minimal visual palette of products was selected, both the selected downlights and track luminaires accommodating various optical distributions and lumen packages to cater for the variable parameters across the interior volumes.

“The retail landscape of tomorrow is all about experiential retail design, a landscape where consumers are looking for meaningful shopping experiences that are emotional and engaging multi-sensorial journeys. Our collaboration with DPA provided the atmospheres and lighting schemes that enhanced our store concept beautifully”  

Linton Crockford-Moore, CHALHOUB Group Creative Director.

Client: Chalhoub Group
Interior Design Concept: FITCH
Interior Design Implementation: Chalhoub Group

Aurum Holdings undertook an extensive refurbishment programme throughout 2015 and dpa lighting consultants were involved in numerous Watches of Switzerland stores across the country, working with Callison, London.  dpa were approached to work hand in hand with the design team to better articulate the lighting within the stores and maximising emphasis on the merchandise, whilst creating a lit hierarchy that provided a welcoming environment and a sense of drama to increase the customer experience.

Shown here are the Watches of Switzerland stores at Heathrow Terminal 5 and Oxford Street, London. Each of these projects has a different look and feel, however the process of co-ordinating and integrating lighting solutions had parity, with careful application and placement of lighting equipment so as to minimise the direct view of lighting equipment and glare wherever possible.  In tandem with this, selecting the most appropriate lamp colour temperature was of paramount importance, so as to reflect the image of the individual brand displays and the true characteristics of the various product ranges.  In addition, the materiality of the interior design and architectural volumes were expressed with lighting application that added extra quality to the end solution.

Further information about Watches of Switzerland can be found by clicking on the link below:

www.Watches of Switzerland.com

Client: Aurum Holdings
Designers: Callison, London
Photography: dpa lighting consultants

Watches of Switzerland - Heathrow Terminal 5 (London, UK)

dpa lighting consultants were tasked with illuminating what was, at the time, stated to be the largest shoe emporium in the world, and located in Dubai Mall, UAE. This vast space was broken down into zones and each zone had its own identity and ambience. The lighting design whilst providing some degree of consistency also had to adapt the different requirements of each individual zone.

Ceiling heights are relatively high and so metal halide reflector lamps were employed to provide both ambient and display lighting from the ceiling. This was supplemented by integrated ceiling cove lighting to enhance the profile of each area and provide additional feature lighting. Further display lighting is integrated into the furniture and a number of interior design features were enhanced again with integrated lighting, on the whole LED.

Client and Operator: Chalhoub Group
Interior Designer: Shed Design, London
Light Art Installation: UVA

dpa lighting design worked closely with the lead consultants, Montana Vistas, and the architects, Darnton EGS, on the new concept 80,000 ft² Morrisons supermarket in Preston. The new lighting concept was just one of many new store design features and innovations, creating a new experience in large grocery retail. The main sales floor is split into two distinct areas, the Market Street, containing freshly prepared food from in store specialists including butchers, bakers, cheesemongers, fishmongers and green grocers, and a racking area, predominantly containing boxed and tinned goods. The lighting to the market street area utilised a number of track mounted spotlights providing focused accent lighting onto the product displays. A warm white, energy efficient, LED light source with excellent colour rendering properties was chosen to best reveal the colours of the displayed products. A different lighting concept was chosen for the racking area, where hi-bay pendants were chosen to tie in with the high-racking ware-house style appearance. Energy efficient ceramic metal halide lamps with excellent colour rendering were used to best show the colours of the displayed products, however a cooler white colour lamp was utilised to provide a visual contrast with the warmer appearance Market Street area, subtly indicating to the customer that they are moving into a different area of the supermarket.

A microprocessor lighting control system is utilised to select the correct lighting scene to suit the time of day and year, and the store operational status (morning / day / evening trading, cleaning, stocking, security, etc.). The lighting control system communicates with the supermarket’s building energy management system (BEMS), thereby allowing Morrisons head office to vary the times at which different lighting scenes are selected to suit changing seasonal opening hours. The dimming and switching of luminaires also provides operational energy savings and reduces the frequency of maintenance required.  Photography courtesy of Andrew Depledge

Tsvetnoy is a new department store in Moscow with a retail concept somewhere between Harvey Nichols and Selfridges. The client was Moscow property developer RGI working with retail consultants Minima. dpa lighting design were commissioned to provide lighting design to all internal front of house areas and the external façade.

The project consists of five floors of men’s and women’s fashion and homewares, Levels -1 to 4, with food market and restaurants on Levels 5,6, and 7. London based retail designers HMKM were responsible for the fashion floors with Architects Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands designing the upper gastronomy levels including a large roof terrace. All floors were visually connected by a front entrance atrium which included a vertical garden in front of the glass lift shafts and this large volume was also designed to suspend large pieces of contemporary art or visual merchandising installations. The exterior envelope is a striking angular design conceived as a mountain by local Moscow architectural practice Meganom.

This Reiss store is located on West Broadway in SOHO and is a large internal space with generous ceiling height. The interior concept was for an industrial shell with high quality insertions. Hence the wall are bare faced brick and the floor is concrete. The ceiling is finished dark and a combination of bare metal finish track and spot together with trimless adjustable downlights provide ambient and display lighting. All light sources are metal halide to cater for the ceiling heights and energy efficiency. The central feature of the store is a large hanging cube chandelier which is lit using fibre optics to slowly shimmer. This feature is further surrounded by glass screens which are lit from about to sparkle and glow. This brakes up the openness of the store and provides visual interest.

QELA is a completely new brand and concept which combines high end couture fashion with a flexible art gallery space. This is the brand’s first flagship store. Architecturally the project is across two floors with a central atrium space and large domed ceiling. The overall FOH area is approx. 750sqm.

There are a number of distinct spaces within the project: Ground floor art gallery space and merchandise display, first floor merchandise display including high end jewellery, VIP Salon, and fitting rooms. There are entrances on both floors. All finishes are extremely high quality and the colour palate is fairly contemporary.

For the FOH areas the brief was to design a lighting solution which provided a luxurious layered lighting appearance to accentuate finishes, architectural interiors and features, and displays. Merchandise was to stand out from the ambient effect with highly controlled accent lighting. This was all to be achieved with as up-to-date lighting technology as possible. The client is very forward thinking and was looking for innovation in all aspects of the design. Due to the nature of the project all lighting has to be very flexible, controllable, and high colour rendering. Luminaires were to be integrated where possible.

The important points to note for the lighting design are:

– All front of house lighting except the jewellery cases and decorative fittings are LED based and dimmable. This provides significant energy saving qualities to the scheme. BOH lighting is typically fluorescent based except at the thresholds.

– All ceiling luminaries for art and merchandise display are remote control from RCL, either track mounted or ceiling recessed. This gives the client operating team ease of adjustment for the changing displays and installations. For the ground floor art display these are controlled from the RCL ‘iDirect’ system via iPad. This applies to direction (pan and tilt) and light level to suit the art. Some scenes are also set.

– All other general, architectural, and retail display lighting is controlled through a Lutron scene set system with directional adjustment with iDirect. A number of scenes are programmed as required.

– Both the RCL iDirect control system and the Lutron system are designed to communicate with each other for further flexibility.

RCL light sources are high power CREE modules to cater for the high ceilings. Various beam angles are utilised. Other LED light sources included the GE Punch modules for the same reasons. Elsewhere Xicato Artist modules are used for normal ceiling heights.

General architectural lighting includes perimeter integrated covelighting to wash feature wall panels and curtains, and concealed uplighting to the feature dome ceiling in the atrium.

For the jewellery display custom designed podiums and wall cases were developed. The glass podiums contained a very slim profile at the top, housing fibre-optic end fittings with 90 degree mirrors. For the wall units again top lighting and low level uplighting is provided by fibre-optics with linear LED to wash the back panel. Light sources are 250 watts metal halide with white colour tuning and dimmer wheels. Typical illuminance values at the base surface are 12000 lux horizontal and 3500 lux vertical.

Over the jewellery consultation desk is a separately controlled cool white spotlight to view silver and diamonds etc. Normally the general lighting is warm white.

The VIP salon is intended to have the ambience and intimacy of firelight . The ambient effect is low but the garments are still well lit with high colour rendering white light from the ceiling.

In the fitting rooms, over the mirror and podium, is a backlit ceiling feature with dimmable and tunable white light. This allows the customer to view themselves in either simulated daylight ( cool ) or for an evening function or at home ( warm ). Additional narrow beam pinhole accent lights pick out fabric textures, and integrated mirror lighting provides a soft full height lighting to the front of the customer. This is supplemented with perimeter cove lighting to wash curtains and feature wall panels, and decorative feature lighting.

Client, Operator and Project Manager: Qatar Luxury Group
Interior Designer: UXUS (Amsterdam)
M&E Consultant: Lead Construction
Photography: Courtesy of Adrian Haddad