Prada Store Re-Design

Final Project Physical Modeling + Lighting Suggestions

Prada Group

DES 136A December, 2022 Georgia Sprague & Adley Sole

Project Information OMA PRADA LOS ANGELES EPICENTER The Prada Epicenter in Los Angeles extends the technological and commercial innovations of the New York Flag Ship store. This building on one of the most visited shopping streets integrates and out stages itself into the specific location of Beverly Hills. The design of this building showcases how the worldly Prada brand and luxury can be shown through austere, brutalist, and bold interior design and architecture.

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Address:

343 North Rodeo Dr. Beverly Hills, CA

Year:

2002 - 2004

Size:

24,000 soft (3 floors + basement)

Scale:

1,900 m2

Program:

Commercial/Retail

Architect:

OMA, Rotterdam, Büro Ole Scheeren Group

Associate Architect:

Brand+Allen Architects

Lighting:

Kugler Tillotson Associates

Facade:

Dewhurst MacFarlan

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Selected Scene This selected scene is the lobby of the flagship Prada store in LA. This is one side of the 85-foot hallway as you enter the store on the left.

Original lighting displayed: The majority of light is created by cool CRI and white 6000K light as a backdrop on the right.

The material over this light is a long connected section of corrugated opaque plastic On the ceiling, there is a direct line of small recessed overhead LED spotlights

SECTION OF LOBBY AT PRADA STORE

Why this scene?

ELEVATION We decided to pick a space that showcased light alongside fashion. Strong and clean lighting is needed for retail space.

We were intrigued by the brutalist interior architecture and steel hallway and we wanted to choose a unique space to build a model.

As part of our research in finding a space to recreate, we wanted to find a space that could have a new lighting design that would create a more appealing and warm visual environment.

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1ST FLOORPLAN

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Process

The majority of the model was built from foam board including the statement pink shelf. The checkered floor, the wood floor, & the silver-reflected aluminum wall, was created from contact paper. We sourced the materials for our model from various stores including Home Depot and Amazon. Finding some of the materials like the corrugated plastic for the walls, was one of the most challenging parts in our project.

Our process was to create the frame of the lobby first. This included the curved room to give the illusion that there was something else there. Gluing everything together & putting the stickers on was the last part. We were conflicted with size & scale of the space & whether to do it in 1/4th or 3/8th of an inch. We followed our floor plan dimensions & realized that if we did 1/4th inch it was going to be too skinny of a hallway to take an exact image so we used 3/8ths of an inch.

Physical Model: Original Lobby Space

We first created the recessed track lighting with small LED string lighting. We measured and poked holes in the ceiling, slipping each small bulb through the holes. We made them recessed by adding a black strip down the left third of the ceiling.

For the illuminated corrugated wall, we evenly spaced out and installed the LED strip lighting so that it highlighted the structural columns down the hallway. We were able to change the lighting luminance until we found the correct level to replicate our image.

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PROJECT ORIGINAL SCENE

PRADA LOBBY

Physical Model: New Lobby Space

We proposed a new design that we hoped would highlight the fun, elements and materials used to create the existing space. Using blush colored vellum, we changed the illuminated, corrugated wall to a pop of pink running down the entirety of the hallway. We also pushed the LED track lighting out more to give a vintage, exposed lightbulb mirror look.

We hoped that by making these changes we increased visual interest, dimmed the sharpness of the original LED lighting, and ultimately offered the customers a more immersive and on brand shopping experience.

Our goal was to accentuate the bold interiors that Prada is known for.

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PRADA LOBBY

PROJECT REVISED SCENE

Reflection Ultimately we thouroughly enjoyed making this project even with the challenges we faced along the way. We found the most challenging part to be photographing the model as the actual photo we were using was created with an extremely wide angle lens.

Having double checked our measurements multiple times, we are very confident in our scale, however, it was challenging to achieve the exact wide angle look that the original photo has. Another challenge we faced was obtaining "to-scale" corrugated plastic for the hallway walls, but we knew that it was an exteremly integral part of making our model look like the original. Once we sourced the plastic, the next difficulty we faced was cutting the very large sheet to the small size we needed. Through lots of trial and error, heating up a serrated knife ended up being most successful.

While this project certainly had its challenges, it pushed both of us in our individual abilities and techniques when it comes to model building, site plan analysis, presentation making and group work. We are proud of our final product and feel as though we put our all into making something we can confidently present and we gained new skills we can apply to future projects.

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Resources https://divisare.com/projects/16864-oma-prada-los-angeles-epicenter. https://www.oma.com/projects/prada-los-angeles. https://buro-os.com/home. https://www.prada.com/us/en.html.