Comvita Wellness Lab: Award winning Retail Experience

Comvita Wellness Lab is a multi sensory physical and digital tribute to bees that embraces the sensorial nature of honey and the hive.

A celebration of the best New Zealand artisans, the lab reflects the warmth of the hive and the premium quality of Comvita’s honey and contains custom designed scents of Manuka tree, propolis and Manuka honey.

A beekeeper hosts a sensploration honey tasting inside a 180 degree theatre where visitors are taken on an unforgettable journey through nature from a bees eye view.

We worked with a leading gastrophysicist Dr Charles Spence to interpret tasting notes into audio visual cues that would heighten the neurological connection for the theatre audience.

Each flavour was prepared and captured in slow motion to give the audience a sense of flying through them and we filmed New Zealand forests to showcase where the bees forage for nectar and recreated an entire landscape in 3D to enable us to give visitors the sensation of flying into a beehive.

The accompanying soundscape was composed by Peter Hobbs from recordings of bees in nature and envelopes the senses in an orchestral way and as we enter a beehive visually the room heats up for a moment to connect to the heat of the hive.

The lab extends beyond four walls with an Augmented Reality mapped forest that transforms the physical space and connects customers to more information about the power of bees.

We also created a 3D virtual wellness lab to access online with a forest to explore and 3D modelled products to browse and shop online.

AWARDS:
NZ Interiors Award 2021 Retail category winner
Good Design Australia Award 2021 Architectural Design Gold
Best Design Awards 2021 Spatial Retail Environments Gold
Best Design Awards 2021 Spatial Exhibition Bronze
Best Design Awards 2021 Digital Installation and Exhibition Bronze
Best Design Awards 2021 Moving Image long form Finalist
Best Design Awards 2021 Product Furniture Finalist
Retail Design Excellence Red Awards 2021 Health & Beauty Winner
Retail Design Excellence Red Awards 2021 Shopfront Excellence award
Retail Design Excellence Red Awards 2021 Digital Integration award