Camille Bloch is a well-known Swiss chocolatier that was established in 1929. Along with creating the much-loved Ragusa and Torino candy bars for the last 89 years, Camille Bloch recently opened a museum and visitor center on site at their production facility. The museum and visitor center gives guests an inside look into how their world famous chocolate is made and learn the interesting history behind the brand.

SORAA was chosen to help bring the new space to life through beautiful lighting, and help the designers pull off a magical, near-theatrical experience for chocolate lovers. Laurent Zumofen at lighting design firm Michel Helson and Slight® to learn more about how this project came together.

Can you give us some background on the Camille Bloch museum and their goal for the updated museum space?

Camille Bloch is a well-established chocolate factory in Switzerland. They wanted to create a space to invite visitors from around the world to discover the world of Camille Bloch family company and its delicious stuffed chocolates. The goal was for the museum to offer visitors a magical immersion in the world of Swiss chocolate.

What was the inspiration for the Camille Bloch museum and how did SORAA lighting help you achieve your design vision?

The designer for the project, Michel Helson, came from the theatre lighting industry and he wanted to design the museum lighting with a theatre approach. That meant lighting objects very precisely, with scenery and dramatic themes.

What was the most challenging aspect of lighting for this museum project and why?

Apart from implementing the sophisticated lighting design, our main challenge was to find the large variety of very precise lighting products that would achieve everything we needed for the lighting specifications from the designer – small fixtures, high CRI, different color temperature, local dim, and of course a large choice of beam angle.

Why were SORAA lamps the right choice for this project?

The lighting designer, Michel Helson and Slight, realized very quickly that the best way to achieve the very technical and very precise lighting design vision was to use SORAA technology. Slight assembled the track fixture and downlights that integrated all of the lighting options we needed by using the popular SLE+C 16 SORAA LED module.

SORAA was absolutely the right choice! It helped us set up and focus more than 600 luminaires in only one week thanks to all of the options that their technology can supply – much like in a theatre.

What was your favorite lighting or design aspect of this project?

It really was the ease of working with SORAA’s high-quality and inventive and flexible accessories. It gave us the ability to bring our theater lighting vision to life.