Zara Generative Cave: a living environment in Coolsingel

Generative Cave brings people's movement and the city's live weather into Zara's Coolsingel store in Rotterdam. Next to the fitting rooms and the tiered seating, a double-sided LED screen shows cave-like textures (reflections, erosion, grain) that never repeat. We made it at Franc Studio in late 2024, from two of the store's concepts: Zara Athleticz, movement, and Grotto, cave textures.

My part: the generative engine

I programmed and configured the experience in TouchDesigner and Python. The system blends two live inputs:

• Movement. Two ceiling cameras capture passers-by; their image becomes pixel flows and colour inference, the basis of the drawing.
• Weather. Rotterdam's live weather adjusts colour, rhythm, brightness and speed. Each type of weather (storm, rain, snow, cloud, sun) has its own palette, with a day and a night version.

The challenge was balance: alive enough to add to the store's rhythm, restrained enough to blend into it. It works on two levels: ambient for people heading to the fitting rooms, and interactive for those who stop to play with it.

From prototype to store

We explored the art direction with two moodboards (with people interacting and with the space empty) and built the prototype in TouchDesigner, with the live-weather mode already wired to the palettes. Then came the preparation: motion tracking, optimising the node network so a single PC (RTX 4090) could run both video inputs and all the generation, and installing the software in the store.