Week 8 - Aria Roach - Site-Specific Blog

    For this week's blog, I visited the Irvine Spectrum. I have been here a good amount of times, but I've never really tried to look at the design of the Spectrum from a lighting perspective or even as a cohesive unit. I think that there are many elements of the mall that fit together, such as the greenery or color of the buildings, but there are also many pieces that feel disjointed from the rest. When I went, the Christmas decorations were in full-swing, so that added another interesting design element to observe. 

    Due to my work schedule, I was unable to visit the Spectrum at night, so most of the lighting elements (save for a few shops) were affected largely by sunlight. However, I thought it might be an interesting take to critique how these crowd-favorite attractions looked in the daylight. The images above showcase some of the family-friendly rides/play areas of the mall. The carousel, jungle gym, and ferris wheel are all located pretty close to one another on the Target-side of the shopping areas (the best way I can think of describing what direction they are in). I think of these three, the carousel is my favorite. With the line of Christmas garland at the top, and the lights shining brightly even in the daytime, this attraction really brought my eye to it. The jungle gym is very cute (there were a lot of families and kids around it) but I didn't care for the colors at all. They seemed to fit within the color palette of some of the surrounding architecture, but the green and yellow didn't really do it for me. Lastly, the ferris wheel was really cool to look at due to its sheer size, and each little car/seat was really cute. I've seen this attraction at night many times, and the daytime look really can't compare. I with there was something more to look at with this site, perhaps a few lights blinking or more dynamic colors, but it kind of fell flat for me at this time. 

    It's a little hard to tell from this picture because of the sunlight, but I absolutely loved this shop, called Lip Lab. The lighting came mostly from these spherical orbs hanging from the ceiling and a large, circular light above the seating. I loved the style of this shop, because it felt like a 70's or 80's style pop artist kind of vibe. In the back, there are these large mirrors that reflect that natural sunlight around the room and have huge, colorful glass spheres in front of them full of (what I am assuming are) different kinds of lip gloss. It seems really fun and inviting, and the focus on rounded shapes throughout brought a lot of cohesiveness in my opinion. In addition, the neon lip lights in the windows drew my attention; I would love to see what this shop looks like at night. 

    This was a pop-up shop that I'm assuming Santa comes to for kids to get their picture taken with, but I really hated the god-awful green color and weird snowman in the front. It felt like they were trying to give a kind of "surfer" vibe to Christmas, but I think it stands out like a sore thumb. I saw no lighting elements that would help it, even at night, and it really just felt out of place for me as a whole. I am assuming that the pictures are taken inside, but I can't imagine it is any better. It was closed when I went, but it would have been interesting to see how they decorated it.