Badoo Pop-up Bar Russia The Badoo dating service played host to a series of eight party nights at a historic mansion in Moscow city centre. Imaginative interior design, supported by an immersive lighting scenography designed by Valery Gorelova, helped create a relaxed atmosphere for guests. The main purpose of Gorelova’s lighting design was to convert the mansion into a surreal space on the border between reality and the virtual world. Of the concept, Gorelova said: “Badoo’s online platform helps to find friendship and love, providing the best matches between users. People all over the world strive for harmony in relationships, so the idea of balance between Yin and Yang, soft and hard, warm and cold, light and darkness, natural and artificial became an inspiration for the interior and lighting design of the space. “At the same time, cybernetic details like neon wires, projections and multimedia screens supported the image of the online dating service virtual reality.” The events, held on Friday and Saturday nights, took over three of the mansion’s four floors, and, as it was a pop-up event, all fixtures had to be temporary, antivandal, and easy for removal, as other themed events were also organised on site during the week. Several combinations of complex materials with reflective, refractive and distorting characteristics were chosen for the interior design and made a great
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impact on lighting solutions. One of the main ideas for the lighting scheme was to combine an imitation of natural lighting phenomena like reflections, refractions, and light gradients with high contrast artificial lighting, such as spotlights and lasers. In order to emphasise the client’s commercial identity, the predominance of pink and purple colours in lighting and decorations became the key point in the design of the space. At the same time, saturated colours were diluted with grey and silver interior elements, while the 3000K colour temperature was chosen for the main spotlights, which were equipped with honeycomb louvres for visual comfort. Coming inside from the street, visitors were plunged into the darkness of the entrance hall. The staircase in front of the entrance was lit by a soft oval flood to maintain safety, while a huge, five-sectioned window upstairs was clearly seen from the entrance, acting as a beacon to draw visitors towards a reception zone. A window located just opposite the reception desk looked into a messy inner yard, so Gorelova used a dichroic filter as a glass coating to hide the courtyard. Backlit by temporary fixtures, the window was converted into a central light installation in the entrance area. Architectural RGB linear fixtures were placed on the porch outside and directed diagonally upward into