Chroma

Project highlights: Chroma

• Architecture firm: Ibanez Shaw Architecture
• Location: Fort Worth, Texas
• Category: Two
• Project site: Previously developed
• Building program type(s):  Healthcare - outpatient - general

• In the heart of Fort Worth’s cultural district, home to museums designed by Louis Kahn, FAIA, Renzo Piano, Hon. FAIA, and Tadao Ando, Hon. FAIA, Chroma transforms the eyewear shopping experience. The project, a dynamic new addition to bustling Montgomery Street, matches the client’s ambition in leaving a franchise optometry practice to create their own identity and brand.

  The new building takes full advantage of its location, engaging with the city and inviting the community inside. Typically, optical stores place millwork display fixtures on the perimeter of their retail spaces, trading daylight for window advertisements. For Chroma, the team reimagined that experience, placing the optical sales area in a glass box that extends from the mass of the building. Uninhibited daylight, a critical asset for the full-spectrum viewing of merchandise, animates the space. Chroma’s free-flowing display fixtures offer shoppers a dynamic experience as they browse a carefully curated collection of frames. 

An elevated walkway, defined by a progression of white steel angle frames, provides a gradual immersion as one approaches the building. The steel elements’ geometry continues through the glass curtainwall, ultimately revealing itself inside as the structure for Chroma’s display shafts. At night, the shafts are illuminated with the brand colors and appear to the community like a sculpture enshrined in a glass case. Patrons exiting a newly constructed 14,000-seat multipurpose venue directly across the street are greeted by Chroma’s bold presentation. 

The building’s structure was achieved through a tilt-wall concrete building system typically reserved for warehouses. Window openings were kept to a minimum along the building’s western portion, which houses testing and exam rooms, spaces that require restricted daylight. 

The team designed all of the display fixtures and steel desks. Chroma’s acrylic display boxes were made locally and designed alongside coordinating recessed electrical boxes that are embedded into the back of their concrete panels. To further reduce costs, the vertical shelf displays, which feature bent-steel plate and round-glass shelves, are mass-produced glass trivets. 

Despite opening at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the client reports continually increasing sales compared to their previous franchise practice. Shoppers will often enter just to experience the building but will leave with a booked appointment or a new pair of frames.