Marimekko, Sydney & Melbourne

It was an honour to have create lighting designs for the world renowned brand, Marimekko; famous for their bright colourful iconic designs in textiles, household goods and fashion which have brightened many a house and person since the 1950’s.

Marimekko, King St Sydney, was not only the first Marimekko store to grace Australian shores, it was the first Marimekko store to be fully lit with LED, and was in fact the 100th Marimekko store worldwide.  So it was thrilling to be involved in the lighting design for such an important milestone in the history of Marimekko.

Its magnificent building, originally a bank, has soaring ceilings, decorative detailing, and mezzanine galleria area, now displaying their colourful homewares, is accessed by a grand sweeping staircase.

The lighting design was aimed towards fulfilling a few critical goals. It was to provide good coverage of the merchandise; be flexible to easily move, change and adjust luminaires for visual merchandise; be low energy; easy maintenance; and we added that it was critical to ensure the rich myriad colours, patterns and textures were brought to life by the right type of light (ie: essence of light using a high CRI light source). These were all achieved through the use of the most appropriate lighting devices, each luminaire covered all the required criteria.

We also ensured that the light design would assist customers to navigate to all corners of the store, so as to journey through the whole Marimekko experience, seeing all of their extensive wares and artifacts.

This was particularly relevant for the Melbourne store. This store also has high ceilings, is long and quite narrow. Lighting was used as an imperative tool to guide customers through the space, navigating them to the various displays from the front of the showroom to each side and to the back. We wanted the clients to really gain a sense of Marimekko and get lost in their wonderful world of colour and patterns. And this was successful with our lighting design.

With light attention was bringing to the delightful iconic artifacts, which after more than 60 years, continues to bring bright design and colourful life in to our lives.

Project: Marimekko, King St Sydney, Chapel St Melbourne
Architect: Saturday Studios
Client: Marimekko