Gap’s Roman conquest

Gap’s new flagship store in Rome occupies a 1930s building with a flying staircase and triple-height spaces. The challenge for lighting consultant Light and Design Associates was to show the merchandise to its very best advantage and make the Gap brand speak eloquently in this dramatic interior. Jill Entwistle reports

The starting point with any retail scheme, says Lee Prince of Light and Design Associates (LDA), is the psychology of the brand. “The first thing you have to do is get under the skin and work out how they’re selling their product and who they’re marketing it to,” he says. “Using light, you can enhance the experience and direct people. Lighting designers who don’t pay heed to what they’re delivering and just think about the lights are missing a trick.”

The Gap flagship store in Rome, the retailer’s first in Italy, is a voluminous space, dominated by a flying staircase. This became a key psychological feature of the overall scheme. “When you walk into a space with a flying staircase you’re encouraged to look up, it’s a natural response,” says Prince. “So we wanted to frame the staircase to make it look as if the ceiling and the staircase were leading to the same vanishing point. The aim was to provide visual stimulation and a clear vertical link to the upper floors.”

This was achieved with a large Barrisol artificial skylight, backlit with a matrix of 1W 4,000K LEDs, that mirrors the dimensions of the stairs. “The skylight articulates the space more, and gives it a lift. We also wanted to break up the ceiling a bit, instead of it being just track and spot.”

Shifting merchandise

Originally LDA wanted to reinforce the effect with a blade of light in the floor and further encourage traffic to the floor above with an interactive video wall. Inevitably, budgetary considerations prevailed. But ultimately the nitty-gritty of retailing is shifting merchandise and the key to that is showing it in the best light.

According to Prince, the Rome scheme moves the brand forward in terms of its display lighting, which in some former outlets has been literally patchy. Gap stores are heavily merchandised with displays reaching down to low-level shelving, which often the lighting – regularly reliant on large compact fluorescent downlights – does not reach. A primary concern for LDA was to resolve this problem, a not inconsiderable challenge in those areas with a triple-height ceiling.

“We wanted to respect the Gap brand language but also move them on a step by harmonising the lighting and the interior and showing off the merchandise better, which is the most important thing,” says Prince.

Accent lighting

Accent lighting – iGuzzini’s Tecnica range finished in Gap white – is mounted in the slots of the floating ceiling rafts and in rectangular slot configurations. Sources are a combination of compact 20W and 35W ceramic metal halide, plus bigger 70W and 150W fittings where more punch was needed. A variety of beam angles gives top-to-bottom coverage.

Although the height reaches up to about 15m, the merchandise on the wall is evenly lit right from the top all the way down,” says Prince. “That’s just by varying the beam angles and ensuring very precise focusing.”

This also allows an original triple-height 1930s fresco at the entrance to be used as an evenly lit backdrop for the clothing. Viewing the differing shades of the blue and black jeans, and the texture differences in the garments, a Gap brand specialist commented that it was the first time she had been able to see such specific detailing in displayed merchandise.

Ambience and accents

Additional layering comes from recessed ceiling fittings (three 35W CMH customised fitting with optical heads and snoot, by iGuzzini) which provide ambient and accent lighting to mannequins, fluorescent halos around the ceiling rafts and floating wall merchandising elements, plus some decorative Flos pendants. Aktiva’s LED reading lights are used in the reading zone below the stairs.

With this degree of integration, the installation relied heavily on close co-operation with the San Francisco-based Gap interior design team plus SPI, which was acting locally, a process helped by LDA’s former collaboration on Banana Republic stores, another Gap brand. “Lighting can have an important influence in driving the interior,” says Prince. “Interior designers often look to lighting designers for ideas on how to make the environment more stimulating.” 

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