Speirs and Major have worked on other Armani flagship stores, notably Armani Store Ginza in Tokyo. "The Tokyo and New York stores are very much about the impression of the Armani brand through an architectural form," states SaMA director Keith Bradshaw. "On Fifth Avenue we developed the idea of wrapping the glass box in an LED screen, effectively extending the impact of the store out onto the street." The animated facade is double-sided and is visible from inside the store at the restaurant level.
To maximize the eye-catching effect of ubiquitous lit mannequins in the store's windows, SaMA found a discreet visual solution by laying a low resolution LED screen around the top three floors of the space, playing with the idea of transparency.
"The benefit of a low resolution screen means there is transparency so we draw the eye through the glazing into the store by day and at night we bring the face of the building to light," Bradshaw explains. "In that way it acts like a type of theatre scrim with a foreground and background."
The project required a custom solution and SaMA were looking for a company that was not only good at LED screens but also had a good sense of product design and found it in Martin Professional.
"The company had to be able to handle LED, control of LED and custom mounting. And the product had to be beautiful as people can view it close up when they are in the store and restaurant," states Bradshaw. "It had to hang true with precise coordination of the joints and not a lot of circuit boards that people could see. We didn't want to do just another LED screen."
The LED bars had to be exactingly placed among an already existing mullion structure of steel and supports. Spacing across the facade varies with approximately 200mm between each bar at the street corner with progressively wider spacing at each end. LED spacing on each bar is 100mm.
"The reason we extended the spacing at the ends, especially down 56th Ave, is that Armani wanted to show ownership of the space - very important in this part of New York," Bradshaw explains.
As the image drifts toward the lower resolution ends, it becomes more abstract. "We really had to get the resolution right in order to get that sense of abstract movement on it."
(Jim Evans)
