The Chelsea store presented unique design challenges that included a deep shop unit with a relatively narrow shop front. This led to the Cinimod design team seeking new and innovative ways to create a highly visible store that would deliver an eye-catching high street presence using a fusion between sculptured architectural and lighting elements. Building on design explorations from previous Snog stores, Cinimod have taken the integrated furniture and lighting design to new levels.

Highly visible from outside is the “Ribbon Ceiling” of undulating light. The complex form was derived using parametric software to create the smooth rippling form that varies in depth and pitch across the overall store plan. Cinimod Studio have a proven passion for experimenting with lighting control systems, with a desire to keep pushing the interactive and generative nature of our digital lighting media content. For the Snog Chelsea store, Cinimod deployed a new lighting control system by amBX. This responds in real-time to the store’s music system, creating dynamic colour movements across the ribbon ceiling that are perfectly in tune with the music. This ensures that the ceiling colours never appears static or repetitive, and instead are in a state of continuous responsiveness to the acoustic environment.

The studio’s expertise in LED lighting was further tested by the introduction of a 100% LED lighting solution for the whole store. This provides unparalleled energy efficiencies and full controllability over the exact quality and brightness of light. Cinimod Studio turned to Philips for their assistance in delivering this ambitious 100% LED lighting scheme. The resulting quality of light is remarkably fresh, healthy and natural feeling, with the brightness linked to the main control system to allow automatic subtle variations throughout the day.

The customer seating within the store is focussed on a single over-size organic bench, fabricated as single piece to achieve the smooth and seamless continuous curvature that provides it’s distinct form.

PROJECT CREDITS

Client: Snog Pure Frozen Yogurt (London)

Architecture Design: Cinimod Studio

Lighting Design: Cinimod Studio

Branding and Graphics: ICO Design

Located at 5 Garrick Street, the site was once the location of an apple store dating back to the 1860′s. This provided the inspiration for the contemporary design, in which a modern day orchard of trees reach up toward a sky canopy of perpetually animated light, gently pulsing and swaying in the imagined breeze of an idyllic day.

Below this canopy lies the grass lawn, with a white fallen tree branch providing the main seating. Around this branch can be found Shitake Mushroom stools by Marcel Wanders, and the marble topped tables familiar from the previous Snog stores.

The feature ceiling is comprised of thousands of individually controllable LED globes, descending from the glowing ceiling on stainless steel rods set to specific lengths. Similar to other Cinimod Studio projects, these lights and their control systems are bespoke products developed by Cinimod Studio for the application.

Psychedelic visuals graces the white glass wall, adding further to the surrealist atmosphere of a unique store that is already being described as “Alice in Wonderland”.

Project Credits:

Architecture and Lighting Design: Cinimod Studio

Main Contractor: Vivid Interiors

Branding: ICO Design

Digital Lighting Design and Programming: Cinimod Studio

Architectural Lighting: Deltalight

Related:

This forms part of our on-going architectural and lighting design work for Snog, as seen in the Snog Pure Frozen Yogurt Stores at Soho,  South Kensington and Westfield Shopping Centre.

Cinimod developed a concept inspired by Itsu’s butterfly motif which was brought to life as an animated visible sculpture.    The dynamic form is based upon the cinematic motion of a butterfly’s wings as it takes flight.

This was modelled as a continuous sequence in 3D software and then sliced at time intervals to determine the evolving angled shapes which comprise the final artwork.

The illusion of the butterfly’s flight is completed by the bespoke software controlling the colour of each wing, allowing for the illuminated and highly visible ‘fluttering’ of butterflies through the piece.

The final result is a surreal and ephemeral lighting sculpture that provides an adventurous and effective addition to the Itsu store design.

Related Projects:

The Itsu “Butterfly in Flight” is an example of Cinimod Studio’s fascination with the fusion of lighting and architectural materials.  Other examples of such integrated artworks include the Interactive Tableaux and the UFO projects.

The kiosk layout is comprised of several main elements: the kidney-shaped service island, the long banquette seating, and the tables and stools. The main island is a striking organic form with a continuously undulating surface that is studded with LED ‘dimples’.

The seating area provides a welcome oasis of calm and luxury for visitors to stop and enjoy their Snogs, with a ten metre long banquette giving shelter from the hustle and bustle of other shoppers. The tables are topped with bright Snog flower graphics created by Ico Design, while Marcel Wonder’s shiitake mushroom stools have again been used, contributing to the air of surrealism and serenity already present in the other stores.

The main kiosk structure is fabricated from composite materials selected for their combination of flexibility and durability. A fusion between computer controlled cutting processes and skilled hand carving and finishing allowed Cinimod Studio to achieve a continuously curving organic form.

The dimples are hemispherical depressions carved within the surface, in which LED nodes are located. Each of these lights is individually controllable, creating perpetually changing light patterns that gently swirl around the kiosk.

Cinimod Studio was responsible for the overall design of the kiosk, working with specialist fabricators and suppliers from England, Austria and the Far East. As per many of the studio’s projects, certain components were developed specifically for the project.

The Snog kiosk serves as a strong example of the benefit of the integrated lighting and architectural design that Cinimod Studio strive to bring to each project, and the studio’s ability to deliver the correct mix of technologies to achieve the final physical result.

Project Credits:

Architecture & Lighting: Cinimod Studio

Branding & Graphics: Ico Design

Main Contractor: Alan Nuttall Ltd.

Client: Snog Pure Frozen Yogurt

Related:

The Snog kiosk at Westfield builds upon our on-going architectural and lighting design work for Snog, as seen in the Snog Pure Frozen Yogurt Stores at South Kensington and Soho.

This drawing is actually a “light painting” (a long-exposure photograph) of a full scale mock-up of our bar design that we have created entirely in real 3D space with light. This physical process has allowed us to be both expressive and experimental with the form, and to focus on the fluid and surreal shapes and colours of our design.

In the Surreal Thing we combine sensual architectural curves with extraordinary lighting to really bring the place to life. The bar is laid out as a series of large curved bays, with casual seating areas between. The plan layout is echoed through lighting bays and feature elements that visually link all the key elements. The lighting mood within the space will shift throughout the day, with colour and movements choreographed to the transition from daytime restaurant to the evening bar. This immersive and engaging environment will feel both exciting and relaxing to the guests. Cinimod Studio feel very at ease operating in this realm of integrating physical form and bespoke lighting design.

It is a fundamental belief of the studio that we should design the experience first and then use our best technologies and techniques for making it a reality. While our design may be illustrated through a non-conventional drawing material, light, we also believe it is fully realisable using currently available technologies.

Cinimod’s design builds upon the brand identity created by ico Design and evolves the strong architectural vision created in the first store SNOG South Kensington, while introducing a different ‘quirk’ in the design: the bubbling ceiling. This lighting feature is comprised of 700 glass globes containing LED lights and presents a new level of visual excitement and public engagement.

Under this effervescent ceiling, a gleaming white counter reaches almost the full length of the store, presenting the assorted fresh and baked Snog toppings within an elegant glass cabinet. Marcel Wander’s Shitake stools have once again been used for the seating, arranged around bespoke tables.  Towards the rear of the store the curved super-pink walls meets the icy-cold glass wall which provides the canvas for seasonal works by guest artists.

Project Credits:

Architecture and Lighting Design: Cinimod Studio

Branding and Graphics: ICO Design

Main Contractor: Vivid Interiors

Digital Lighting Installation: E-Luminate

Architectural Lighting: Deltalight

Feature Lighting: Cinimod Studio (bespoke product)

Related:

This forms part of our on-going architectural and lighting design work for Snog, as seen in the Snog Pure Frozen Yogurt Stores at South Kensington and Westfield Shopping Centre.

Working closely with the client, StudioUribe, and the branding agency ICO Design, Cinimod Studio has designed a store that is excitingly fresh, and with a unique digital twist.  The concept was to evoke the feeling of a perfect never-ending summer. The interior is deliberately quirky, with a photographic grass floor and a ‘digital sky’ which adjusts the mood of the store perpetually throughout the day and evenings.

The primary interior surfaces are all of standard architectural finishes that have been ‘tweaked’ to perform new design functions.  The seamlessly printed ‘grass’ floor is a commercial first, as is the digital ceiling with its fully integrated services.  For the white glass walls ICO Design has created a graphic interpretation of British flowers.  At ground level, the ‘Shitake’ stools from Moroso, designed by Marcel Wanders, work with the bespoke marble tables on turned wood bases to create a contemporary and relaxed take on garden furniture.

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SNOG is the first store to feature a fully digital ceiling, which has been seamlessly inserted as a key element within the design.   Over 3,000 individually controllable LEDs have been deployed behind a Barrisol stretched plastic ceiling in order to create a bright light box video surface.  Digitally captured and manipulated clouds move gently across the store, with their colour and speed determined by the time of day.

Click here for more photographs of the Snog Pure Frozen Store.   SNOG was also recently front cover of Design Week – see full story here.

In addition to designing the first store now open, Cinimod Studio is delighted to have been appointed as the lead architect and lighting designer for the future SNOG stores, opening soon across London.

For more information, visit the official website www.ifancyasnog.com, or even better why not stop in for a Snog? It’s all happening at 32 Thurloe Place, South Kensington.

Design Consultants:

Architecture and Lighting : Cinimod Studio Ltd.

In design collaboration with : StudioUribe

Branding and Graphic Design : ICO Design

A/V Design and Installation : Inspired Dwellings

The brief was to retain as much of the base-architect’s design as possible, whilst bringing an exciting new design element to the tower. Our artwork proposal makes a novel use of lighting and perspectives to create a “trompe l’oueil” effect of a virtual void at the base of the tower. Discovered by artists in the Renaissance, the perspective drawing creates the illusion of three-dimensions on a two-dimensional surface. These same principles have been employed to produce the illusion of a void in which a blue cube is floating. By analyzing the view-lines towards the building from the surrounding streets, a perspective illusion is constructed which can be read from a key vantage point. When viewed off-axis, the artwork vanishes to reveal an intriguing geometrical framework.

The artwork is to be constructed primarily using standard architectural components, with simply their finishes and layout modified. Additional lighting is used at night to further accentuate the work.