TOY STORY Automated Luminares Create A Playful Environment At FAO Schwarz In Las Vegas By: William Weathersby, Jr.

Anyone who has cruised past the Egyptian Pyramid, battling prate ships, fantast New York skyline, and errupted volcano along the Las Vegas Strip can vouch for the city as one of the themed entertainment capitals of the world. While the resort's hotels and casinos remain at the forefront of inventive entertainment and lighting design, its retail venues haven't shied away from spectacle either.

Toy giant FAO Schwarz recently opened an expansive store at the Forum Shops at Caesars Place that is loaded with enough bells, whistles, and lighting effects to make any customer feel like a kid again. Designed by the toy company's veteran interiors firms, New York-based Newbold Associates, the 56,000 sq. ft., three-floor venue is twice as large as the retailer's average store and second only in size to it's 75,000 sq. ft., flagship in New York City. The FAO Schwarz in-house team, headed by vice president of store planning and construction Dik Glass, worked with principal designer Joanne Newbold to create a store that serves as an entertainment destination in itself, beginning at the front door.

Taking a cue from the enclosed mall's pseudo-Greco-Roman architectural details, and playing off the retail chain's signature rocking horse logo, the design team placed a 48' tall animated Trojan horse at the entrance to captivate passerby. Elsewhere in the venue, a Star Wars Cantina, a "Temple of Barbie," a Monopoly refreshment bar, and a menagerie of animated characters and toy animals help bring childhood fantasies to life. New York based Johnson Schwinghammer Lighting Consultants, collaborated with lighting designer Marsha Stern to enhance the playful environment with multilayered theatrical illumination. "FAO Schwarz's concept was to create a show around the Trojan horse that would be repeated every 10 minutes throughout the day," says Stern. "I initially brought in by Johnson Schwinghammer to implement the theatrical lighting aspects of that centerpiece effect, and my role later expanded to include augmenting specialized lighting in other areas of the store. My job was to try and view things through the eyes of a child. I aimed to create lighting effects that would grab customers and make them want to venture inside, to experience something they perhaps haven't seen in a shopping environment before."

With animation programmed by Garner Holt Productions, the Trojan horse rises the full three-story height of the store, its moving head framed by the front doorway. The horse actually functions as a piece of architecture itself, housing a shop inside its belly that can be accessed from the second floor, with additional display niches carved out of its base. During the three-and-a-half minute show various animated figures pop out of compartments within the horse, accompanied by a lively soundtrack of music and effects: A chorus line of Barbie dolls performs the cancan, while another doll is held in the clutches of King Kong. A cow dressed as an opera singer is juxtaposed with a robotic hand wielding a feather duster. Meanwhile, the horse moves its head up and down, blows steam out of its nostrils, and rolls its eyes as they change color.

To illuminate the hoseplay, Stern employed 21 High End Systems Studio Color automated luminaires mounted along the second- and third-floor slabs surrounding the horse, within the third-floor ceiling, and in the coffered ceiling in the mall piazza fronting the store. "We used the Type S electronic switching ballast on the Studio Colors, which had just the luminaires and coordinate the exact sequences and colors," Stern says. Working with High End Systems, programmer Brad Schiller, Stern set the show's lighting within a four-day schedule before the store opened. "We knew the basic format of the show, so we combined movement with the color changes to make sure there would be 360ƒ coverage with something happening on every surface of the horse. We did a lot of teaking of the lighting look on-site. There are many elements of animation in the show, and I designed the lighting so that customers might want to see the presentation a couple of times from different vantage points,"

All programming for the automated luminaires was performed on a High End System Status Cue control board, then downloaded onto a CPU. Stern accented the mane of the horse with five High End Systems Dataflash AF1000 luminaires that glow with pink and blue strips of light. "I've got to say hats off to my programmer, Brad, since he was able to get the luminaires to simulate a fade-up, when of course what they really want to do is strobe and flash." To illuminate retail displays inside the belly of the beast, Stern used downlights, ribbon uplights, and candelabra lamps.

Coming Soon: The Entire Article: Lighting Dimensions 5/1998