Refreshing redesign

A new visual appearance for a shopping centre

With a sales area of 76,000 square metres, 200 specialist shops and over 7,000 parking spaces, the Nova Shoppingcenter in Leipzig is one of the largest shopping centres in Germany. The mall, which was built in 2006, has now been completely renovated. The aim of the repositioning was to develop Nova into a theme park for leisure and sports for the whole family. Then as now, the project was implemented by ECE as the centre operator in cooperation with the lighting designers from Tobias Link Lichtplanung und Produktdesign. 

PRESERVING THE TRIED AND TESTED

Visitors enter the mall through the multi-storey car park in frontside and immerse themselves in the interactive light and sound installation "The Living Seas", which has welcomed visitors unchanged since the opening. Here, the lighting designers created a 56m-long room installation that rests in deep blue light. Visitors entering the room occasionally hear the sound of a drop of water from the silence of the space. When the visitor walks in, he triggers light waves that mix with sounds and blossom in the most beautiful colours the maritime world has to offer. 

DYNAMIC DAYLIGHTING

The task for the lighting concept was to follow daylight with colour temperature and illuminance. For this reason, all luminaires were equipped with mixable white light from 1,800 K - 6,500 K. The photos show how the lighting climate changes at different times of the day, analogue to daylight. The change runs unnoticed and fluidly from a glorious sunny June day to a beautiful warm white sunset the same evening.  

COLOUR CONCEPT IN LIGHTING AND SURFACES

The installation seamlessly welcomes and accompanies the visitor into the centre of the mall, divided into the 3 large themed areas "Play", "Eat" and "Relax". These were set off from each other in the colours yellow, orange and dark violet.  The spacious promenades between the themed areas are kept in neutral beige and sand tones, with high-quality wooden surfaces mixed in. This colour scheme is continued in furniture and wall and column panelling as well as in lamella ceilings, creating a beautiful accent and, in combination with artificial light adapted to the daylight, ensuring a feel-good atmosphere.  Whereas in the past the ceiling surfaces of the entrance areas were kept discreetly coloured in order to set the scene by means of coloured light, the refurbishment focused on strong colours for the surfaces. The lighting, which can be controlled in white tones, can be used here to intensify the colour impression and, in some cases, to soften it to some degree.

LUMINAIRE DESIGNS INSPIRED BY NATURE

In the Relax area, an artificial tree has been created with countless shade lamps to create a dreamy atmosphere. This is achieved by the sophisticated double-walled construction of the luminaires: they thus create a wonderful lightness and are able to emit soft diffuse light as well as brilliant light for a beautiful contrast in the room. Smaller versions of this light sculpture scatter as if by chance in the connecting areas of the large avenues. The mall has 4 large rotundas, the centres of which are decorated with spiral-shaped cloth-covered luminaires that look like inverted fountains.  The single-storey parts of the shopping streets were designed with light-beam ceilings that create a visual elevation of the space and pick up on and continue the colour scheme of the adjacent areas.  The food court forms the centre of the mall with its clerestory and wave ceiling. Illuminated pylons, which create dynamic light effects from within with an LED matrix, dominate the space and can be illuminated in different ways for different occasions. 

Photos: Tom Gundelwein