A Futuristic Tranquillity

E Studio was invited by KClighting to design its global flagship showroom in China's capital of decorative lighting. We took the chance to break with the conventional idea of the lighting shop: after thinking hard about what commercial space really is, we created a new kind of retail experience for the future, sharing our vision with the world through technology and art.

Reality & Fantasy

Focused Light

Focused light lights the space and strengthens it at the same time. Through a plain, unadorned physical form, the entrance creates a calm, introverted atmosphere, a futuristic tranquillity that fuses technology, space and architecture.

Inspiration & Connection

We began by asking how people should feel as they enter: a sense of detachment the moment they step inside, and a strong feeling of the theme, "reality and fantasy". Our instinct was that it should not be too complicated or too curved. Columns are a building's main vertical structure; dividing the space around them, they no longer stand alone but become strong, solid planes, simple enough to belong to both the past and the future.

Visitors enter from one side; on the other is a large floor-to-ceiling viewing window. Sensors in the glass let them interact with a robotic arm, an emotional touch that connects them with the space.

Switching between the digital and the real world, the moment two entirely separate worlds meet gives visitors an emotional experience beyond what they imagined.

Installation Art

On the lighting display table, fittings of every kind can be switched on and off with buttons. At its centre is a robotic arm, programmed to take lamp parts apart and put them back together, and to move in human-like gestures. When visitors arrive, it dances, responding to the lighting in the room.

A Floating Box

A solid black box makes a strongly sculptural statement. Inside it, with HoloLens as the mixed-reality device, visitors can interact with KClighting's products, and the box can show interactive projections and mixed-reality installation art.

The lighting changes its tone and rhythm to suit how the space is being used. During a concert, for example, the lights are dimmed, and some of the furniture, along with extra benches, can easily be moved.

Coffee Corner

Art is built directly into the visitor's route: a passage that works as an exhibition space for painting, sculpture and video art. A coffee corner sits just before it, where stone and the raw concrete columns join old and new, emphasising architectural detail and the profiles of the materials.

Shirley: Visions of Reality

Shirley: Visions of Reality, the first live-action feature by the Austrian filmmaker, architect and experimental artist Gustav Deutsch, is one of those rare works that defy categorisation. Recreating 13 paintings by Edward Hopper, it traces three decades of American history through the life of Shirley, a fictional red-haired actress who meets the social and political changes around her with the same passion she brings to her private life. The film shares the painter's visual traits: vivid colour, strong diagonals, bright light and large empty windows that hint at the wider world outside and all its hidden possibilities.

Lighting an exhibition space is demanding. Showing the true colours of the objects matters greatly for artworks, and good lighting gives visitors visual comfort so they can see the pieces clearly. Beyond using the highest CRI (colour rendering index), the fittings are hidden away to keep the artworks whole and give visitors the best possible viewing conditions.

Track Light

Lines enrich the abstraction of the simple forms, serving both function and appearance: magnetic tracks allow different fittings to be displayed flexibly.

Lounge

Scholars, artists, designers and other groups come together here. Sharing one setting, they spark collaboration and a sense of community that helps that community grow.

Concrete, black wood veneer and stone set the building's basic palette. E Studio cares about the visual and emotional experience a space gives people, rejects thoughtless piling-up of materials, and stands for innovation and the value of design.

Client
KClighting

Location
Zhongshan, Guangdong

Area
345 m²

Completion Date
2021.10

Design Firm
E Studio

Lead Designer
Fan, Junjian
Zhou, Xuanzhuo

Design Team
Huang, Chenxi

FF&E
Deng, Changyi

Lighting Design
ULDA × E Studio

Branding
whateverbrand

Photographer
Zhang, Chao
Luo, Canhui