Nike Paris, House of Innovation 002

For the Nike Flagship store on the Champs Elysées, Paris, L’Observatoire International worked with the Nike Design team to craft a lighting response that spoke to the brands foundations and paved its way for its future identity on the Champs Elysées; fusing the dynamism of a sports arena with the sensitivities of the Parisian Avenue. Lighting needed to be adaptable, transformative, and technical. It needed to connect the physicality of sport, the theatre of watching it in play, and the tangibility of the product on display. 

The lighting response was a construct of many layers. The first; a fixed layer of lighting that expressed the architecture and the parameters of the building. The second; a multi-tiered layer of flexible ambient and dynamic lighting that allowed the space to adapt in use. The final layer, integrated and localized, allowed the emphasis of specific product displays and the expression of feature details.

In the design of these lighting layers L’Observatoire International took inspiration from the expressed technicality of the Nike Air Max and the visible structures of the Pompidou Center, Paris. The store was intended as a transformative space, with a central ‘arena’ that would change in use and function on a regular basis. The lighting response was to create a multi-layered and interchangeable lighting system at the ceilings; where truss mounted projectors and layers of direct and indirect lighting could facilitate dynamic transformations in layout.

Through each of the stores varying floors the lighting design looked to articulate the architecture, to express the historical ‘shell’ of the building, while engaging it in a new mode of play; one where the historic framed the experience, the technical adapted to use, and the innovative engaged in a very human experience. 

Lighting is layered. It is dynamic. It is immersive. It blurs boundaries. Built like a sports facility, operated like a theatre, experienced by everyone.