An Immersive Mall Experience for Atriums and Holiday Centers

Shoppers walk past a hundred signs between the parking garage and the food court. They stop for something that moves, surrounds them or puts them in the picture. That is the job of a mall attraction: give people a reason to come in, slow down and stay a little longer.

We design projection-led attractions for malls, retail districts and the brands inside them, from atrium centerpieces to seasonal holiday builds. If you have a space to fill, tell us about the mall and the season.

An immersive mall experience competes with everything around it. In a mall or on the Strip, competing lights and sounds dilute your message, so the attraction has to be bold enough to read across a concourse and inviting enough to step into.

The defining challenge is the building's rules. A mall is a working property with tenants, schedules and safety codes, and an atrium install has to fit around all of them. Getting those terms right early is what keeps the opening date.

• Floor load. For indoor malls, confirm the floor load rating before anything is ordered; a projection dome weighs 200–500 lbs.
• Power and fire safety. Indoor domes give you controlled light and a stable climate, but power and fire safety have to be agreed with mall management: 20-amp circuits per projector, and dome fabric that is flame-retardant.
• Quiet, cool running. Mall displays can run in tighter footprints, but they have to operate silently and manage their own heat.
• Rigging and noise limits. A mall atrium gives you controlled lighting, but it may restrict what can be rigged and how loud the show can be.
• Placement for foot traffic. Point the entrance toward the flow of shoppers so the attraction catches people already walking past.
• Blended atrium canvases. Tall atriums come to life when several projectors are blended edge to edge. Our guide to blending multiple projectors explains how.

Atrium centerpieces. A dome, a mapped wall or a projected floor in the atrium becomes the meeting point people photograph and send friends to. Retail projection needs no permanent construction, and content can be refreshed for each new campaign, with the install planned around opening hours, ambient light and the way shoppers move.

Holiday centers. The season is when malls compete hardest for visits. Start planning about 12 weeks out for a holiday or event campaign so the structure and dates are secured. Christmas formats have their own page on Christmas projection mapping.

Brand pop-ups inside the mall. A tenant or sponsor can take over a corner for a weekend or a month. Short builds are covered by pop-up events, and product rooms by immersive showrooms.

For the surfaces themselves, see floor projection mapping and ceiling projection mapping. Attractions that respond to shoppers are covered by interactive projection mapping, full walk-in rooms by immersive projection rooms, and photo moments by immersive selfie experiences.

• The Venetian holiday show, Grand Canal Shoppes, Las Vegas. With BESTAgency, we created a Christmas projection mapping show for the Streetmosphere performers at the Grand Canal Shoppes inside The Venetian Resort, kicking off the 2021 holiday season. The St. Marks Clock Tower was mapped with custom holiday content timed to live music. Because the content was processed in advance, the 17-minute show ran at the press of a button, on a 32k lumen 4K Christie Boxer projector and our custom media server.

See all our projects.

Send us the mall, the space or atrium, your dates and what the attraction should do for the property or the brand. We will come back with a concept, the requirements for mall management and a schedule. To see everything we do, visit our projection mapping services page, or talk to our team.