Spotlight on shopping centers: festive lighting in Finland, Germany, and the UK
This month, we’ll be taking a look at three different approaches to festive lighting in Finland, Germany, and the UK. Each of these centers created a luxurious look-and-feel that put visitors in the mood for shopping and Christmas.
Iso Omena, Finland
A warm, gold-inspired festive treat that created a consistent feel between two distinctly different parts of a Finnish shopping center.
Iso Omena is a shopping center that truly serves its community. In addition to its shopping tenants and a wide range of food and leisure offering, the center also contains many centralized municipal services including the local library, the Espoo city common service center, and the office of the Finnish employment bureau. A chapel, cinema, 8,000m2 of office space and 95 apartments with a direct entrance to the center all contribute to the center’s aim to be “like a small city”.
When the center started looking at their festive lighting, they needed a solution that their shoppers would embrace as well as one that would create a cohesive look and feel between the original part of the center and the new, more modern area.
The result was the installation of a relatively simple festive lighting display that featured large, golden motifs that resembled Christmas baubles, filled with light points and decorated with strings of baubles in gold and silver. These hanging decorations emitted a warm glow and creating an inviting atmosphere in which visitors could shop and go about their daily business. A large walk-through Christmas ornament, strung with light, doubled as a photo point, making every visit to the center an opportunity to pose for photos.
For more information, view the project or visit MK Illumination Finland.
Fünf Höfe, Germany
Cascades and canopies of string lights combined with star-motifs and a pair of angel wings in search of an angel made a shopping trip an experience.
Munich’s Fünf Höfe offers visitors around 60 stores (35 unique to the center), a selection of cafés and restaurants, and a space that hosts temporary exhibitions known as the Hypo-Kunsthalle. This luxury space has 5 entrances accessible on 4 streets, and boasts 5 “courtyards”—hence the name—many of which are spacious, airy and very much up-market.
Visitors to Fünf Höfe have high expectations when it comes to lighting and design, thanks to the regularly changing shop fronts, their “hanging garden” and the the Olafur Eliasson sphere, so when our team in Germany proposed a new festive lighting display, they knew that they needed to create something that would be both striking and stylish, that would impress without being vulgar, and that would get people talking.
The result was a combination of hanging lights star motifs and light canopies that flowed through the corridors and passages of this popular center. Each entrance was marked with star motifs in warm white, inviting passersby to stop and shop, and a pair of custom-designed angel wings, studded with light, encouraged visitors to become angels for a day. The center integrated the angel wings photo point with a “Heavenly Competition”, where visitors could post their photos on Instagram for a chance to win vouchers in a weekly giveaway.
For more information, view the project or meet our team in Germany.
The Bentall Centre, UK
Opulent chandeliers and elegant strings of warm white light highlighted the elegance of one of Kingston’s prime retail destinations.
The Bentall Centre is a large shopping center in Kingston upon Thames, London, England. With over 100 retail spaces in its 4-level shopping center and a 5-level department store, the center’s proportions are impressive, with an atrium ceiling higher than the nave of Westminster Abbey or the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral.
When MK Illumination UK was invited to help the center create a festive impression for the holiday season, it was quickly agreed that any lighting and decoration needed to be timeless, opulent and convey a classic elegance that would fill the vast space with a welcome atmosphere for shoppers.
The result was a concept that combined strings of warm white light indoor and out with sophisticated chandeliers that hung throughout the center’s interiors. A bespoke ‘flower’ chandelier was suspended from the shopping center’s main atrium ceiling that hid a visual surprise: when viewed head-on, visitors saw an enormous, beautiful light chandelier. Visitors viewing the chandelier from below, however, saw flower petals emerge from the design.
For more information, view the project or get in touch with MK Illumination UK.
For more examples of how we’ve helped shopping centers transform for the festive season, see our retail real estate reference projects or contact us for case studies.