Sunglass Hut

First opened in 1971 in a small kiosk in a Miami shopping mall, Sunglass Hut is now a worldwide destination  for all major high quality sunglass brands. Its stores, which provide consumers with a fun, highly engaging  shopping experience can be found in every major city from the Americas, Europe and the Middle East to  Australia, South Africa, China and South-East Asia. Since taking over Sunglass Hut in 2001, Luxottica has become a world leader in eyewear retail distribution, and on 31st December 2015 the Group had 3,153  Sunglass Hut brand stores around the world.  The store opened in the Soho district of New York in 2015 is the first store in collaboration with iGuzzini designed by the Milan-based B612 architecture studio.

The studio is named after the asteroid in The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery and its head architect, Marco Rivolta, is particularly inspired by avant- garde technology and futuristic lifestyles.  For the Sunglass Hut store the studio designed a layout that combines the clarity of white walls for the product displays with street style relaxation and entertainment areas for customers featuring graffiti and  contemporary furniture.  For the lighting system, two versions of the Laser Blade luminaire were chosen: adjustable and wallwasher.  The latter have been positioned to provide an optimal vertical wall wash effect in the product display areas, while the adjustable version provides accent lighting. The luminaire’s compact size and modularity also gave the architect the opportunity to create exciting graphic effects on the ceilings.  This exciting store design won an Innovation Award at the New York Retail Design Institute Awards.