How Light & Lives used lighting to create a zen-feeling spa in The Dubai Mall.
Creating an organic feeling, Moroccan-style spa in the middle of a brightly lit mall was an ambitious project. It was certainly one that required an expert eye. Which is why the design firm Brand Creative enlisted the expertise of Light & Lives.
“The design language was quite different from the traditional retail concept,” says Afsal Mohamed, founder of Light & Lives talking about Izil Spa. With the client, a popular Moroccan-themed brand, asking for an ancient building feeling within their windowless The Dubai Mall retail space, lighting was key.
Replicating a stone cave, the client was keen to have enough light to highlight their products, while also maintaining a level of authenticity to the old-time feel. “The first challenge, it being a retail project, was achieving the right level of light that make the store pop and catch the customer’s attention,” explains Afsal. “In order to achieve this, we needed to have a surplus or sufficient amount of lighting that didn’t affect the overall design.”
With the lack of natural light making the client’s ‘organic’ request that bit harder, the Light & Lives team sourced various products to create atmosphere and a sufficient amount of illumination.
For the indirect options, the team integrated LED strip lighting into the furniture, architectural coving, and joinery details. “Then we added parasol illumination systems, which are like stretch fabric parasols, to give off light emission from a large organic space on the ceiling rather than using a cold technical electrical lighting fixture.” In doing so, the lighting experts were able to create the illusion that there’s sunlight seeping into the cave-like space.
Being a retail store, spotlights were necessary to shed light on the products. “We cherry- picked high-performance spotlights with really small diameters and arranged them in a symmetric manner to enhance the design rather than disrupting it,” says Afsal.
The team’s multi-dimensional approach to lighting means the spa has a soft, relaxing ambience, whilst being practicality lit. Favouring indirect lighting options, Izil Spa is a soothing environment. A meeting of design-savvy minds, Brand Creative’s architectural elements and furniture choices are enhanced by Light & Lives carefully considered lighting choices.
