In an upscale Shanghai retail and hotel development called Jing An Kerry Centre sits Michael Kors’ new flagship store. To distinguish the street-front boutique from its neighbors in this shopping district, the design team—architect Kohn Pedersen Fox and lighting designer Tillotson Design Associates (TDA)—developed a unique façade that showcases the identity of the Michael Kors brand, while giving it a timeless and universal appeal. “Light was always the main focus for this façade concept,” says Thomas Bergeron, senior associate at TDA. The dynamic composition, which makes the façade look like a luminous fabric, is created by the use of hundreds of thousands of individual, hand-cut, angled, aluminum reflectors.
The design team narrowed 35 concepts down to one, and the designers worked principally in model, at multiple scales, so that they could study the play of light and reflection in the various configurations of the panels. The main challenge was how to create a sense of brightness and sparkle that would read both up close and from a distance without the disturbance of a lot of glare. The façade needs to work both during the day in natural lighting conditions and at night when the panels are illuminated by two different grazing fixtures located at the top and bottom of the entire assembly. The first fixture types are 10-degree 4000K LED grazers that illuminate the top front, the bottom front, and the bottom back of the panels with white light. The second are RGB LED luminaires with a medium beam distribution that create color-changing effects, and which sit behind the bottom grazing fixture. Like a cascade of paillettes on a garment, lighting transforms the façade from an ordinary curtainwall into a luminescent feature.
Project: Michael Kors Shanghai Flagship Store Façade, Jing An Kerry Centre, Shanghai • Client: Michael Kors Store Design Team, New York • Architect: Kohn Pedersen Fox, New York • Lighting Designer: Tillotson Design Associates, New York • Façade Dimensions: 5,000 square feet • Project and Lighting Costs: Withheld (per client’s request) • Code Compliance and Watts per Square Foot: Not applicable
Manufacturers
EcoSense Lighting: 10-degree-beam 4000K grazer for white lighting effect at façade top front, bottom front, and bottom back • Philips Color Kinetics: eW Fuse Powercore, RGB LED, with 30-degree by 60-degree optic for rear silhouette dynamic color-changing effects • Alanod: Textured mirror-finish aluminum reflectors
