Project Overview

In 2022, Chas Clarkson delivered a breathtaking golden Christmas wonderland for one of Australia’s premier, luxury shopping centres in the heart of the Gold Coast, the renowned Pacific Fair.

The festive experiential pop-up precinct, entitled 'Santa's Treasures of Glistening Christmas Gold,' celebrated a unique whimsical act of magic. “Everything that Santa touched with his enchanted gloves magically transformed to become golden!

The creative team’s vision was to create a fairytale-inspired, luxurious Christmas decoration programme at Pacific Fair that was narrative-rich, interactive, joyful and abundant with opportunities for community involvement.

This golden Christmas landscape was adorned with iconic decorative statement pieces inspired by nostalgic stories, characters, and motifs, with a touch of Gold Coast whimsy. Christmas magic could be found around every corner, with Santa's golden festive universe on display across the expansive centre and its outdoor courtyard areas.

Pacific Fair's bespoke Australian-designed Christmas decoration collection included an alluring, carefully curated selection of statement pieces embellished with sculptural design details and finished in a signature gilded colour palette.

The wonderland installation included: Santa’s Christmas Palace - Santa experience; Chas Clarkson’s signature 12m George and 10m Botany Christmas Trees; more than 80 illuminated spiral ceiling light decorations; the Grand Bauble Staircase archway; the Luxe Mall “Flight of the Festive Butterflies” installation; and a collection of secondary narrative-rich sculptural photo & void installations dotted across the centre.

Organisation

Chas Clarkson

Team

Tim Clarkson (Managing Director)
Trudi Flemming (State Manager)
Andreas Zehntner (Creative Director)
Adam Walker (Technical and Logistics Director)
Gerard Ryan (Production Director)
Lucie Sekaninova (Major Projects and Overseas Production Manager)
Adam Graham (Bespoke Production Manager)
Kim Walker (QLD Account Manager)
Sharon Thorp (QLD Operations Manager)
Amy Levinson (Creative Producer & Experiential Lead)
Sally Carson (Industrial Designer)
Juan Sebastian (Senior Interior Designer / Santa Experience)
Bruna Rosa (Senior Interior Designer / decoration suite)
Cherise Misquitta (Industrial Designer)
Samuel Clothier (Technical and Installation Manager)

Project Brief

Pacific Fair Shopping Centre’s strategic vision for their two-year decoration roll-out program was to have a Christmas time decoration landscape that affirmed them as one of Australia’s, and the world’s, premier Summer-time Christmas Shopping destination. To have a decoration suite that would complement their mix of high-end lifestyle and luxury retail tenants, encourage longer customer dwell-time and return-customer visitation.

The Chas Clarkson-designed decoration program needed to be a narrative-rich design concept that had never been seen before and one that exuded the design attributes and quality of the Pacific Fair Shopping Centre’s DNA and community values.

The business ambition for the new Santa experience was to double the number of families having their annual photos with Santa at the shopping centre, for the Santa experience to be the most successful Santa experience in the state of Queensland, and for it to be in the top 3 performing installations in Australia. In turn, the revenue generation would also double and grow year-on-year.

The decoration program brief stipulated that all the installation designs not only had to encourage community engagement but also deliver incremental campaign amplification and brand awareness through visitor-generated content being published to customers’ social media platforms.

Project Innovation/Need

The Chas Clarkson creative team held several design workshops when ideating the design for the Pacific Fair Shopping Centre. These workshops had three main areas of focus. The first area of innovation was designing a robust Santa Pavilion structure which would provide solutions to three distinct challenges:

1) prevent shadows created by harsh direct sunlight from being cast onto Santa and guests having their photos taken;
2) minimise the heat factor for a Santa dressed in full Christmas regalia; and
3) create a safe and enjoyable space free of distressing distractions for neurodivergent children and adults visiting Santa.

The second area of innovation was how to bring the narrative-rich design to life via interactive storytelling. A bespoke local character called “The Sandman” was 3D modelled and animated, then displayed on a giant screen at the beginning of the visitor’s journey. The Sandman character waved and called over the children to have their photo taken with him delivering an additional unique photo memento of their visit.

The final area of innovation was in relation to lighting quality and amplification, by improving on our standard Santa experience lighting and delivering something unique. Our ambition was to deliver greater customisation with our floor lighting. The design introduced a RGB W LED defused strip lighting system which was integrated into the cable channels beneath the set’s fencing and which up-lit the perimeter of the structure. The end result provided additional festive bling during the daytime and an emotive atmosphere at night.

Design Challenge

The design challenge for Pacific Fair Shopping Centre was to create several Christmas installations that would last for years despite the environmental and sustainability challenges, as well as produce designs that reflected the high-end aesthetics of their surrounding area whilst looking as good as new year-on-year.

The proximity of the beach and the high-powered winds of 20-29 km/h- commonly experienced on the Gold Coast where the Pacific Fair Shopping Centre is located - raised concerns and great design challenges given that the major installations were to be placed external, exposed spaces in the centre.

To overcome this design challenge, in collaboration with structural engineers and metal fabrication experts, the Chas team designed metal structures that were fit-for-purpose and coated in a PVD (physical vapour deposition) coating, which provided the structures with anti-rust protection against the harsh salt air and wind speeds. This material also gave the designs a polished and elevated aesthetic, resulting in that gilded gold finish.

Sustainability

For Pacific Fair Shopping Centre’s new Christmas decoration program, our commitment to environmental consciousness shines as bright as our new Christmas trees. Thoughtfully designed, these festive installations and giant beacon like Christmas Trees exemplify our dedication to sustainability, whilst embracing Pacific Fair’s unique festive spirit.

Key to our vision was to craft festive installations and giant Christmas Trees that endure the sometimes-unforgiving Gold Coast weather. To achieve this, we selected UV-stable foliage, PVD coated metal and UV baubles, ensuring that they would radiate brilliance year after year, no matter the weather.

Built from carefully selected materials, including recyclable metalwork and LED lights, these installations and Trees were in Powered by low-voltage LED lighting luminously, whilst minimising power consumption, making them a beacon of sustainability during the festive season.

The Pacific Fair installation used 80% less PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) than any other of Chas Clarkson's installations due to the extensive use of PVD and its salt-resistant properties. This means that the designs will not only have a longer life span of seven to eight years but also can be easily redesigned into different installations (if Pacific Fair wishes) and can be recycled into other products afterwards. This allows the installation to be reused and transformed into another extraordinary project in the future or sold-on to another GPT Shopping Centre.