Where Heritage Meets High Performance: Lighting the Arc'teryx Flagship at Sydney's QVB

How do you honour one of Australia’s most beloved heritage buildings while delivering the clean, performance-driven aesthetic that Arc’teryx is known for globally? The answer, as it turns out, lives very much in the light. The QVB is no ordinary backdrop. This Romanesque Revival masterpiece spans an entire city block on George Street, Sydney, and has been drawing visitors through its sandstone arches, mosaic floors and glorious stained glass windows for well over a century.  Before penning articles for your good selves, I would often amber through this beautiful building. But that’s a story for another time, I have lots to get through. So, here’s the lowdown on the store you can’t walk past (and the lighting behind it).

Arc’teryx’s new three-level flagship from designers State of Play, spanning 476 square metres across the QVB’s largest apparel-based tenancy, (and the largest Arc’teryx store in the Southern Hemisphere) introduced Australia’s first Alpha Store concept.

The Brief: Minimalist, Premium, and Alive to the Space

The lighting brief encompassed reflecting Arc’teryx’s clean, minimalist but sporty brand identity, highlight product and material quality, and create a premium shopping environment across multiple levels. In practice, that meant navigating a double-height entrance, a mezzanine level, a shopfront with heritage constraints, fitting rooms, joinery display zones, and the small matter of some extraordinarily beautiful stained glass windows that had been enchanting Sydneysiders since the Federation era.

ambience‘s lighting designer Nishat Khan approached the project with a flexible foundation: a track system across most spaces, paired with integrated lighting within joinery to allow seasonal merchandise changes without disrupting the overall scheme. “We had a track system for most spaces along with integrated lighting in joinery to have flexibility in lighting as merchandise changes every season,” she explains. It’s a practical solution that also keeps the ceiling plane clean, very much in step with the Arc’teryx aesthetic.

Products Built for Precision

Across the three levels, the lighting specification centred on ambience’s andro family — a range known for its refined proportions and precise beam control — deployed thoughtfully to suit each zone.

• Andro Tracklight S handled general retail spaces, delivering crisp, focused illumination on apparel and product displays without visual clutter.
• Andro Tracklight M stepped in for the double-height entrance areas, where greater throw distance demanded a more powerful solution.
• Andro 48V Tracklight S was specified for the vertical tracks in the shopfront, bringing precise accent lighting to the window display.
• Andro S Adj SM and Andro S Fix SM provided further flexibility for targeted display and architectural lighting throughout.
• Kit Mini S was chosen for the fitting rooms — a detail-oriented choice that delivers flattering, accurate light exactly where customers need it most.
• Bendable Medley and Medley LED strip provided integrated architectural illumination within joinery and key feature zones.

All andro fittings were specified in a black finish throughout, maintaining visual consistency and reinforcing the brand’s no-fuss, performance-first aesthetic.

The entire installation was commissioned on Casambi, using CFH Joe Switch and CFH Joe Phase Dimmers to deliver a flexible, wireless lighting control network across all three levels — giving the store team the ability to adapt scenes as seasons and collections change. (Oh, and did we mention our friends at Control For Humans for your Casambi goodness?).

The Colour Temperature Conversation

One of the more nuanced design decisions on this project was the choice of colour temperature. Arc’teryx typically favours 4000K across its stores, a crisp, cool tone that reinforces the brand’s performance-driven, activity-focused identity. But the QVB space presented a compelling case for something warmer.

“Arc’teryx usually goes with 4000K, a really cool CCT they prefer considering they want to promote performance and activity,” says Nishat, “but for this store, since they had so much wooden material in a lot of spaces and the heritage aspect of the building, we recommended they use 3500K and it actually enhanced the space.” The 3500K light sits warmly against the timber joinery and the sandstone bones of the QVB, making the space feel premium and inviting.

The Stained Glass: A Heritage Moment Lit Beautifully

The QVB’s stained glass windows are intricate works of art that not only enhance the building’s Romanesque architecture but also transform the interior into a kaleidoscope of colour as natural light filters through. (speaking of, check out our piece here on making technicolour kaleidoscopes) Within the Arc’teryx tenancy, these windows are a defining feature and lighting them was both the most technically demanding and the most rewarding challenge of the project.

Because the QVB is a heritage-listed building, structural modifications the team had to work within the existing fabric of the building to achieve the desired uplighting effect, a process that required a custom channel to be installed alongside the window frame, carefully painted to blend seamlessly with the surrounding architecture.

The result speaks for itself. As Nishat puts it: “I think the most interesting part of the project is actually the stained glass. Lighting that up has really accentuated the space from the outside. I think that was actually a very interesting bridge between the heritage side of the building and the modern lighting, it’s a good amalgamation.”

From ambience’s project coordination side, Viv Taing agrees: “The stained glass already gives the space so much character and warmth, and being able to enhance this feature in a subtle way is one of our favourite aspects of the project.”

Standing on George Street at dusk, looking up at those illuminated windows glowing from within a performance outdoor brand’s flagship store, you understand exactly what they mean.

The Shopfront: Solving the Double-Height Dilemma

The shopfront presented its own set of puzzles. With a double-height space and limited frontal lighting positions, illuminating the mannequin displays to the standard the brand required was genuinely tricky. The solution was elegant: a lower-height track was integrated along the window frame itself, bringing light down to the right angle without compromising the architectural integrity of the façade or the sightlines from the street.

The Whole Picture: Cohesion Across Three Levels

What Nishat loves most about the finished project is how it holds together as a whole. “I love the fact that it’s a big store with lots of levels including a mezzanine store and double-height entrance, which actually made it essential for us to place lighting at different levels — but in a way that it doesn’t look haphazard. While every level has its own unique experience, they all blend together because of similar elements being used throughout.”

That cohesion was the result of close collaboration across a large and skilled project team — Amer Sports, State of Play, EMAC, NGC and ambience working together with the RDM team at QV through a fit-out that ran from January through to the May opening. As Viv puts it: “Seeing the vision finally come to life inside such an iconic space was the best part.”

Photography: https://cieranmurphy.com/