Date Announced: 15 Dec 2009 -- Custom Martin Professional LED display wraps flagship store in an element of aesthetic excitement. -- Lighting design by Speirs and Major AssociatesGiorgio Armani’s newest flagship store on New York’s 5th Avenue has been wrapped in a custom Martin LED display designed by design firm Speirs and Major Associates (SaMA). The four-floor glass box store is located on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 56th Street in the heart of the shopping district, prime space for a flagship architectural fashion store. Speirs and Major AssociatesSpeirs and Major have worked on other Armani flagship stores, notably Armani Store Ginza in Tokyo. “The Tokyo and New York stores are very much about the impression of the Armani brand through an architectural form,” states SaMA Director Keith Bradshaw. “On Fifth Avenue we developed the idea of wrapping the glass box in an LED screen, effectively extending the impact of the store out onto the street.” The animated facade is double-sided and is visible from inside the store at the restaurant level. TransparencyTo maximize the eye-catching effect of ubiquitous lit mannequins in the store’s windows, SaMA found a discreet visual solution by laying a low resolution LED screen around the top three floors of the space, playing with the idea of transparency. “The benefit of a low resolution screen means there is transparency so we draw the eye through the glazing into the store by day and at night we bring the face of the building to light,” Bradshaw explains. “In that way it acts like a type of theatre scrim with a foreground and background.”Not just another LED screenThe project required a custom solution and SaMA were looking for a company that was not only good at LED screens but also had a good sense of product design and found it in Martin Professional. “The company had to be able to handle LED, control of LED and custom mounting. And the product had to be beautiful as people can view it close up when they are in the store and restaurant,” states Bradshaw. “It had to hang true with precise coordination of the joints and not a lot of circuit boards that people could see. We didn’t want to do just another LED screen.”SpacingThe LED bars had to be exactingly placed among an already existing mullion structure of steel and supports. Spacing across the facade varies with approximately 200 mm between each bar at the street corner with progressively wider spacing at each end. LED spacing on each bar is 100 mm.“The reason we extended the spacing at the ends, especially down 56th Ave, is that Armani wanted to show ownership of the space - very important in this part of New York,” Bradshaw explains. As the image drifts toward the lower resolution ends, it becomes more abstract. “We really had to get the resolution right in order to get that sense of abstract movement on it.”Viewing angleSaMA wanted the screen to have a broad viewing angle so that passersby, whether in a passing taxi or walking from nearby Central Park, could understand the image from different viewing angles, not just straight on. The solution was a rounded custom LED bar developed between SaMA and Martin, something that Bradshaw describes as a “beautiful piece of industrial design” that allows for a wide 150 degree symmetrical viewing angle. Each bar, only supported vertically, is hung to fit in with the varying mullion structure while maintaining the good viewing angles of the imagery. Art screenWhen considering media content SaMA had several factors to keep in mind, including a tight planning restriction on Fifth Avenue that limits lit brand signage to only 20 square feet. The Armani LED display was never meant to be a brand screen. Bradshaw calls it “more of an art screen than a media screen – more enigmatic than branding.” Atmosphere of the brandA design agency in Milan called April was commissioned to deliver the abstract content, characterized by slow subtle movements – imagery that describes the “atmosphere of the brand.” Content floats across the screen, intensity and speed of the animation balanced with the impact. It is delivered to the screen from a Martin Maxedia Compact Rackmount™ media server, operated through a Martin Maxxyz PC™ lighting controller. The LED display runs at about 20 percent of brightness at night and 80 percent during the day. The Armani /5th Avenue store opened in February 2009 with the animated façade finalized in summer 2009. See the Armani/5th Avenue video at www.martin.com Martin ProfessionalFounded in 1986 and headquartered in Aarhus, Denmark, Martin Professional is a world leader in the creation of dynamic lighting solutions for the entertainment, architectural, and commercial sectors. Martin lighting solutions are industry standard on top tours and events, grace prestigious theatres, energize nightclubs, and decorate major television studios around the globe. Other important areas of application are indoor and outdoor architecture and commercial applications where Martin products are increasingly being used to transform spaces through dynamic light. Martin also offers a range of advanced lighting controllers and media servers, as well as a complete line of smoke machines as a complement to intelligent lighting. The company operates the industry’s most complete and capable distributor network with local partners in nearly 100 countries.
Contact
For more information contact your local Martin distributor or PR Coordinator Larry Beck at Martin Professional at: Telephone: +1 719 686 0793 Fax: +45 87 40 00 10 (DK) / +1 954 858 1811 (US)
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Web Site:www.martin.com
