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• Softline Specialty Store 3,001-25,000 Sq. Ft.
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2010 Design Award Winners

Special Awards

Best Flooring Award

Barneys New York Chicago

The flooring choices for Barneys New York’s Chicago store provide a residential feel and move customers through the space. Warm oak and teak woods and various colors of limestone were the main materials, but perhaps the most dramatic and eye-catching is the detailed mosaic at the store’s main floor entry. Here, black, tan, creams, and white squares stretch in various linear shapes and patterns through the jewelry department. What makes this project unique is that to ease the cost and time associated with installing and shipping, the tile was manufactured with a one-of-kind panelizing methodology.

Best Illuminated Color Mixing

Under the Stars The Shops at Columbus Circle, Time Warner Center, New York

As the name implies, Holiday Under the Stars provides shoppers with the experience of walking under 14-foot Moravian stars in a choreographed lighting display set to music. Positioned within the indoor center’s 150-foot-tall entrance, the display is also visible to passersby on the street, as well as to shoppers at the entrance and upper levels of the Columbus Circle shopping center. Textured Plexiglas, metal, 8,500 LEDs, 11,000 fiberoptics, and 156 strobe lights complete the visual display recognized as the “largest specialty crafted display of illuminated color mixing in the world.”

Best In-Store Communication

Orchard Supply Hardware Santa Rosa, Calif.

Creating new graphics for the store, designers focused on wayfinding and communicating the depth of information required while evoking a sense of the brand, which is rooted in agriculture. Designers created an easy-to-shop cognitive map inspired by specialty markets to create a circulation plan. Each of the store’s newly created zones features stenciled wall “potato print” macro graphics and finishes that relate to the color and character of the zone, making zones easy for customers to find. Directory signage with graphic details like inch marks of a tape measure provide additional subtext. Pylons provide bits of hardware wisdom that include quotes such as “Hardware is all the nuts and bolts that hold our homes and lives together.”

Best Lighting

Murale Montreal

Lighting was very important in this space, where ambient light washes were used throughout in addition to direct lighting to ensure perfect color rendition for customers sampling the cosmetics retailer’s products. While the main lighting combined fluorescent, halogen and LED lighting, clear Starfire glass LED-lit “fins” define the derma area and act as a focal point towards the rear of the store, where the back wall is further defined by a kinetic light installation. Curved, translucent sandblasted acrylic panels are backlit with LEDs, creating a sense of movement within the space.

Best Wall Treatment

Starbucks Coffee Company:Merchandise Wall 1st and Pike, Seattle

Highlighting all things coffee and echoing the first Starbucks store located nearby, Starbucks’ merchandise wall features a tapestry sewn from coffee bags from the local roasting plant. Lincrusta wall covering, a deeply embossed wallcovering made of natural materials (primarily wood flour and gelled linseed oil), was used as wainscot throughout the store. Repurposed materials and distressed finishes help contribute a nostalgic, time-worn patina to the space.