Case Study: Hard 8

UVFX's D.C. Leslie-Pringle, inventor of big-beam ultra-violet lighting and fluorescent applications, recently completed the design and installation of the Downtown LA showroom and lounge for - 'HARD 8' - a T-shirt design and printing company marketing worldwide and closely tied to the international DJ circuit and the Haus music scene.

Housed in an old 4 story building on Hope and 12th. (once a Cadillac Showroom) three hundred yards from Staples Arena, the space is 2500 sq ft. in an 'L'-shape with a 20 ft. high ceiling supported on 10 peripheral columns bordered with Roman/Greco relief moldings.

Intended to serve as both a daytime retail showroom and to double as an Event Space for DJ - CD releases, event after-parties, fashion shows etc., the initial design criteria was established by the colossal scale and, as a border-molding virtually circumnavigated the entire room and the tops of the peripheral columns - it suggested a ceiling-size window frame allowing one to look through and out into space.

Lighting both upwards for an illuminated sky and downwards for the showroom displays, called for a dual lighting system serving both purposes for day and/or night use. The overall design also included a VIP mezzanine floor in the cup of the 'L', a giant DJ stage with dressings rooms below for the T-Shirt customers, and a divider system and lighting rig to separate the printing process from the showroom aspect, but which would never-the-less be visible to retail customers.

The sky, a fantasy Milky Way of stars and star-clouds with two seemingly random nebula explosions and a moon is called; 'Spirits of the Night' and to the careful observer two energy forms, one decidedly feminine and the other masculine, can be seen to seemingly reach across the entire 'L'-shaped sky to touch in an explosion of light beams.

Spattered stars and airbrushed fluorescent star-clouds and nebula explosions, hand painted column leaf moldings, red-line sky-window frame and relief frieze moldings on several walls, were all illuminated with 32 x 40 watt BLB TL's built onto a steel-encased light beam continuously connected via the Saturn-like rings around the paper balloon lamps suspended down the center of the 'L'. A Track light system was fitted below this to light the T-Shirt displays on the floor below. Electrical current is transferred through the same beam/rings configuration from a single power input point providing for 4 switches to control the 4 light systems, but only the track-lights are dimmable.

The overall look suggests an elongated spaceship hovering beneath an intense starfield.

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