Lightwaves By: Lois Hutchinson ----THEATRICAL LIGHTING FIXTURES

For sheer drama, retail lighting designers look to the theater. The impact of pattern projectors, color washes and automated lighting fixtures is proven. But these fixtures were not originally designed for permanent installations. Themed venues have driven their evolution, increasing reliability, life and energy efficiency. Today, theatrical-type archi- tectural fixtures create animation, mood and intensity in thousands of retail experiences."

The Madison, Wis., Sentry Foods supermarket is divided into "shops" to evoke a neighborhood marketplace feel. Lighting designer Marty Peck, Creative Lighting (Milwaukee), used pattern projectors in the produce area to contend with the low ceiling height while lending "outdoor" ambience. Pattern projectors use slide projector-type reflectors and lenses to cast an image onto a surface. The lenses are adjusted to focus the image precisely, and the patterns (like slides) can be changed. Punched-out metal gobos, color filters, lithographed glass and vivid dichroics all come in standard and custom patterns.

An existing header jutting down from the ceiling bisected the space, says Peck. "I saw it as an opportunity to promote this outdoors/indoors feel. Projection luminaires throw abstract clouds onto the flat surface, giving it texture, or a three-dimensional feel. It goes well with the meadow mural just behind, instead of blocking it, so it worked out in a number of ways."

Should Sentry Foods choose to remodel, the cloud gobo and straw-yellow color filter can be replaced with artwork, a logo or signage. Peck calls it "intense wallpaper." The metal halide pattern projector he chose, from ETC (Middleton, Wis.), is more practical than the original halogen version developed for the theater: Four times the lamp life means replacing bulbs less often; it consumes two-thirds less energy and runs much cooler.

Also, Peck animated Sentry's seafood "shop." "We brought in these same projectors with blue filters and wave-like templates to create an underwater theme. Animation wheels, which are fairly inexpensive, fit into the template slot and rotate the gobo," he says. "It's almost like light dancing through water This little bit of liveliness draws your eye into the space."

Marsha Stern, president of Marsha Stern Lighting Design and Consulting Inc. (New York), joined the melee at the FAO Schwarz flagship store in New York. She exploited inexpensive halogen pattern projectors, as well as rock 'n' roll-type automated fixtures, to add flash and fantasy to the Star Wars Episode I and Nickelodeon boutiques. "The automated equipment gives that movement of light and changing saturated color that create visual excitement," Stern says, "something that will attract people from 50 feet away."

In the Star Wars boutique, color washes from Iridium automated fixtures, an ETC line, swoop and play across the walls, floor and spaceships. "They let me turn the lights out in the ceiling and work from a dark palette," says Stern, "Lighting in the wall units adequately illuminates the merchandise without taking away from the overall dark, spacey ambience."

For the Nickelodeon brand, "they took a heavily trafficked aisle space in the center of the main floor, and wanted something to make it stand out from all these other high-impact areas that enveloped it." Stern chose automated color wash lights with on-board controllers from Martin Professional (Hollywood, Fla,). "You can get more lights out of your budget if you don't have to pay for a control system, too," she adds.

Theatrical-type lighting fixtures are generally pricey, and with automated fixtures there's the added cost of programming. Because of their complex electronics, optics and motors, automated fixtures can be higher maintenance (although this is becoming less of an issue as the technology evolves]. According to Paul Gregory, principal of Focus Lighting (New York), "Some owners just want that level of excitement. They really want, as we do, to put the patron on a stage - to create a theatrical environment that the viewer is part of."

Gregory specified a highly versatile moving-mirror automated fixture for the atrium of the U.S. flagship H&M store in Manhattan. "They came to us for a big splash," he says, "something that would create excitement on Fifth Avenue," At the top of the huge three-story atrium in the middle of the first floor, six Italian Clay Paky fixtures create spiraling, changing patterns and color washes on the walls and floor Gregory says, "The beams move-and-hold about every 15 seconds," adding a lot of kinetic energy.

As they go around, the fixtures also highlight various products. When all six come to rest on a single black dress, they're pouring on 300 to 400 footcandles:

"It's simply brighter than anything on Fifth Avenue," says Gregory. "Whether we're streaking the wall for texture or projecting patterns on the floor or changing colors and aiming to light the product like a sculpture - it's really endless how much we can achieve,"

Marsha Stern Lighting Design and Consulting Inc. (New York) infused the FAO Schwarz flagship in New York with flash and fantasy, courtesy of inexpensive halogen pattern projectors and rock 'n' roll-type automated fixtures.