Featured Project

Our featured project is the Bruce store in Vancouver, Canada. The designer is Paul Mercier of Stebnicki Robertson & Assoc., Inc.

Bruce, called an "anti-department store" by its owner, represents a new trend in urban modernist stores that offers a selection of the world's best in modern designer fashions, shoes, homewares, gifts , eyewear, art, CDs and magazines to a targeted, sophisticated audience of trendsetters and early adopters. In 2000, the store won a Cadillac Fairview Achievement in Retail Concepts (ARC) award and a $50,000 top prize.

Both the architecture and the lighting had to complement a two-story open-store concept featuring a wide assortment of merchandise that changes constantly with the seasons and styles. It also had to mesh with the unique merchandising vision of the business owner.

The retail space totaled 11,000 square feet with two levels and featured an open ceiling structure. The second level was interconnected to the ground floor with an open staircase and contained a bistro for customers to relax in while experiencing the unique ambiance of Bruce. The front facade of the building is a two-story glass structure which allows the entire store interior to be viewed from the street.

The lighting design challenge was twofold: provide a lighting system that would address the technical challenges of this high-ceiling retail space. And also satisfy the concern of the architects and owner that the lighting concepts presented would address their vision for the space and actually be delivered in the end. A complicating factor was that the lighting designer was located in a Calgary office separate from the architects and that both were far removed from the owner in downtown Vancouver. Client communication was an issue.

With a two-story open ceiling, the foundation requirement for the store was a lighting system suspended from the uppermost level that would not only provide general illumination but would also create high-contrast ratios to highlight the merchandise and make it stand out to shoppers. A bell-shaped luminaire was selected by the architect and modified from the original to provide the lighting levels required for the retail application. Two different sizes of luminaires were selected. Although all the luminaires were to be mounted at the same height, the second-level luminaires had to be physically smaller in size.

Given this lighting challenge, both the architect and the building owner were uncomfortable about how this proposed system would work out. As many retail design experts know, display lighting has to have large contrast or uniformity ratios between circulation areas and the product usually on the scale of 10 to 1. The architect questioned whether the contrast ratios would be too low and therefore create a flat space with no depth perception. It was clear that with this innovative lighting design, both the owner and architect needed visual support indicating the lighting effects and the size of the luminaire within the space.

AGi32 was used to produce color renderings in seconds and minutes, rather than hours or days. This feature gives the design team the benefit of reviewing how early lighting concepts will look and allows them to make changes on the fly as needed. It also eliminates the time wasted waiting for slower programs to produce renderings.

In Bruce, the software was used to create a three-dimensional color computer model of the architectural interior and exterior that can be viewed interactively from any angle.

Once created, renderings can be made into colored images exported as bitmaps or 3D VRML worlds that can be easily emailed to the client or architect via the Internet. Most computers today can open up bitmap files so there are few problems with transferability. VRML viewers are widely available on the Internet.

In fact, these emailed renderings were integral to the Bruce design process. They allowed both Bruce's owner and the architect to easily see exactly how the proposed lighting system would achieve the anticipated results. They were also able to review early concepts and make comments for changes. Via this "Internet charette" the lighting system design was finalized between all parties with an impressively high degree of certainty and client satisfaction.

In addition, the costs of client communication were greatly reduced. Where previously commissioned hand-colored or software-generated renderings would have to be couriered back and forth across the city or, in this case, from Calgary to Vancouver, this new system is faster, cheaper and more efficient. It means that lighting design work can be done from anywhere in the country and it also heralds an impressive improvement in customer service and quality control for this, or any, lighting project.

You may contact Paul at pdmercier@shaw.ca.

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