Elegant and sublime, Cabana Shanghai Kerry Center Store is a clever play of mass and volume. And our lighting design for the space also played between visual perception of heavy and lightness.   

The store is located on the corner of the building and comes in two levels. A 5 meters tall, frosted U-glass façade sits on ochre beams and columns. We painted the wall behind the U-glass to matt white and lit it up with two sets of linear wallwash lights, one from above and anther from below to make it looks light and airy. Furthermore, we designed the Cabana logo as customized light boxes, recessed into the already lit wall, with 1:5 ratio in terms of illuminance in comparison. Blanc de blanc. Like blobs of light frozen into a giant ice cube.  

The interior space follows clear rules – solid ochre ceiling and roof stand on light grey perforated brick walls. We put high efficiency LED track lights into 3mm thick stainless steel channels, mounted on the surface of the ceiling to add to the sense of heaviness. In contrast, we recessed linear LED with opal glass finish into the floor along the perforated brick walls, to make it appear lighter and lifted, which also adds a sense of depth when looking through the walls.

Between major displace rooms, the ‘poche’ areas are embraced by marble walls and has a lower ceiling. Here we installed backlit barrisol ceiling to make them more grand and less repressive, but with a twist. The backlit ceiling is filter with a layer of 30x30mm in width, 1.5mm thick stainless steel louver. We think this solid feel brought by the steel louver belongs to the space and the dense texture echoes with the perforated brick walls. 

There is also a centralized smart lighting control system installed, with clock function integrated to switch on/off the lights automatically. Dimming function has also been adopted for better visual comfort and conserve energy.