MIAMI – Haven is an intimate restaurant in the trendy South Beach district of Miami, featuring an Anolis LED lighting scheme created by lighting designer David Chesal and Mike Boles, the venue’s independent owner, who wanted “Something different.” The LEDS extend throughout the venue, into the kitchen and beyond the bathrooms to the outdoor cafe.
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Anolis Finds a Safe Haven
Haven is an intimate restaurant in the trendy South Beach district of Miami, FL, featuring an Anolis LED lighting scheme created by lighting designer David Chesal and Mike Boles, the venue’s independent owner, hospitality designer and tech-savvy entrepreneur, who wanted “something different.”
The restaurant is a contemporary food lounge fusing a mix of cutting-edge design, international cuisine and creative cocktails in South Beach’s busiest business district.
This most recent creation by Boles in collaboration with Chesal features a state-of-the-art light and sound installation that retains a warmth and accessibility that Boles believes will appeal to both locals and out-of-towners.
Chesal and Boles have collaborated before on producing differently themed environments, and both are big fans of the Anolis LED brand. “I needed a quality and reliable LED system to complement the style and elegance of the Haven marque,” explains Boles.
The design involves the installation of lighting everywhere in the venue – down-lighting the bar, dining area, strafing the walls, illuminating the tables, running through the ceiling and imbibing the toilets with a comfortable radiance.
The concept works seamlessly in helping morph Haven’s aura from lunchtime lounging to early evening contemporary fusion dining to later evening dancing, chilling and cool DJ sets.
Chesal and Boles took all these different mood parameters into account when considering how to light the venue.
Haven’s rich, all encompassing ambiance is established through attention to detail and technical insouciance. The walls – effectively a massive HD projection window – can be streamed with one continuous digital image, ranging from breathtaking scenic views to abstract video art, evoking a constantly evolving environment which is also ideally suited to branding for private events.
The lighting magic starts outside where Haven’s café offers open-air dining. Embedded in the overhang above are Anolis ArcLine Outdoor Optic fixtures fitted with 25 x 6 degree lenses, giving the exact throw angle required to light the floor section below perfectly without light spill.
Once inside Haven, a water wall feature has the same Anolis ArcLine Optic fixtures grazing the textural black stone behind.
This effect works brilliantly, and Chesal comments, “The stone is absolutely jet black, but the output of the ArcLine Optics is so intense that they do literally color change black with absolutely no problem – and that’s really impressive.”
The two back-lit stone bar surfaces are internally lit with Anolis ArcLine Optic 4, an RGB WW (warm white) source. The fascia skimming effect on the stone again capturs the vibrancy and luminosity of the light, creating a rich internal shimmer.
Above the bar a channel is carved out of the wooden ceiling to the exact dimensions of a strip of ArcLink with 25 x 6 degree lensing, which beams downwards illuminating the area.
In addition to the back lit onyx fronting and topping the bar, embedded in the floor are 14 Anolis ArcSource 3 in-ground RGB units with 25 degree lenses up-lighting the cocktail tables. When the tables are removed and the area becomes a dancefloor, these same lights take on a new role as color changing effects fixtures.
The ceiling cones and the liquor tiers behind the bar are lit with Anolis ArcLink 3s – a very flexible pliable unit – and above the DJ booth is a row of ArcLine Optics down-lighting the decks.
The groovy lighting extends to the toilets, with custom recessed boxes scooped out of the ceiling, each fitted with powerful Anolis ArcSource 7 RGB WWs with 6 degree lenses. The light sources are imperceptible to the eye producing ‘illusory’ pools of light from nowhere.
Ensuring that nothing escapes some type of lighting treatment, and also proving that Anolis is versatile enough to be specified for practical applications as well, the main kitchen work areas are also illuminated with ArcLink 3s.
Additional touches include a ceiling grid of 1,000 color changing frosted replica ice cubes used by Haven’s mixologists combined with 14 zones of soft LED down lighting and a walnut-tree structure with an illuminated canopy for additional warmth.
Chesal sums up, “Haven was one of these amazing projects with real scope to illustrate what’s achievable with good lighting, and how this can add to the whole visitor experience and boost its success, literally as a ‘chameleon’ style environment. It was seriously inspirational working with Mike on the project, and I amproud of the results of his vision and imagination.”
In addition to the aesthetics, Haven also benefits from the low power consumption and minimal ongoing maintenance costs of using LEDs.
