Type
retail

Source
project commission

Client
Intra Lighting d.o.o.

Address/Site
Diamant building, BTC City, Ljubljana

Total floor area
260 m2

Program
retail salon

Materials
laminated wooden plates, lighting

Architect
SADAR+VUGA (Jurij Sadar, Boštjan Vuga,Tina Hočevar, Adrian Petrucelli)
Lighting consulter: Matej B. Kobav
Graphics: Gigo Design

Photo
Aljoša Rebolj

The prototype for the interior design of Intra Lighting, the new consulting and sales studios of the leading Slovene manufacturer of lighting fixtures, can be found in the first Flos showroom in Milan, designed by Achille Castiglioni in 1968. The showroom’s interior houses independent and movable show cases, boxes with one side open, in which individual lighting fixtures of the Flos production are displayed. Individual cases are grouped within the showroom according to the type of lights on display (ceiling, wall, table or other lights). This type of presentation has enabled individual lights to be isolated from one another, which, in turn, influenced and stimulated the buyer’s concentration on a particular type of light. In 1990, Castiglioni designed the fourth generation of Flos showroom. The increasing number of new and different products made it impossible to simply augment the number of show cases in the room. The lights were rather placed in small separate rooms, in which the daily occurrences of the use of light could be simulated: kitchen, bedroom, office and others. The showroom thus became a mise-en-scène of a living area.

Intra Salon translates a lighting object into a lighting effect and a programme-defined room into a spatial atmosphere. The prismatic show cases, measuring 2.0m x 2.2m x 2.6m, are set in the space of the salon so as to conduct the visitor’s path around the salon. The cases are movable and adapt to the activities and occasional events at the salon. Instead of lighting objects, the prisms rather display lighting effects, with which the desired atmospheres in a room are established. The lighting effect is the result of several factors: the choice of the right fixture as well as the structure, colour and temperature of the room. Its appearance and degree of efficiency depend, of course, on the knowledge and experience of the lighting engineer. The spatial atmospheres established through the lighting effects are no longer tied to the programme in a particular area; a similar atmosphere can therefore pervade the bathroom but also the working area.
Intra’s products, the lighting fixtures, are displayed on the outer walls and parts of the ceiling of the salon. The lights form groups of two-dimensional clouds that graphically determine the perimeter of the salon. The clouds are composed of sales families of individual light types. The advantage of such an installation is a great flexibility, since individual new products can be added without changing the whole.

The show case with lighting effects thus becomes a ‘feature unit’ not only of the individual salon, but of the entire Intra Lighting company. The presentation of the lighting effects in prisms within the dark area of the salon stimulates the visitor’s inclination for discovering and learning about the different uses of light. The salon thereby becomes a lighting ‘wunderkamer’.

Intra Salon in Ljubljana offers seven lighting effects:

1. SHOPWINDOW (display of different possibilities of illuminating an object)

2. ROOM (displays of lightings that relieve the objects of their sharpness and clarity and thus give them a softened and blurred impression)

3. HOVERING (display of the lighting effect provided by a hovering monolith that gives the impression either of lightness or heaviness, of closeness or distance in relation to the individual’s standpoint)

4. COLOUR (lighting that transforms the two-dimensional colour pattern into a three-dimensional one and dispels the difference between the vertical and the horizontal)

5. TEXTURE (display of lighting that either accentuates or effaces structures and textures of the illuminated materials)

6. SHADE AND INTERFERENCE (display of projections or shades of bodies onto a surface that causes them to interfere amongst themselves)

7. INFINITY (illusion of an infinite space created through light)