Mile High Run Club

I designed the studio and its lighting system. Runners face a wall of mirrors with an illuminated rear wall behind them, so every person in the room is framed against a field of shifting color. The gradients change slowly across the session, tracking the narrative arc of each class — a warm build during the warmup, cooler tones through sustained effort, peaks of intensity at the summit. The reference was James Turrell more than any nightclub: light as atmosphere, not spectacle.

I extended the rear wall into a full 360° installation by concealing additional fixtures under the edges of the mirrored panels throughout the classroom. The effect wraps the room in color without any visible source — the mirrors themselves seem to glow.

To give coaches control over this environment in real time, I designed a custom iPad control surface. Instructors can load scripted lighting programs that synchronize with the studio's music, dim or intensify the room, and trigger momentary pulses as visual pace cues — a flash on the beat to signal a speed change. The system also monitors the sound output and can auto-sync to the music's rhythm, so the lighting breathes with the playlist even when the coach isn't actively driving it.

The flagship proved immensely popular. Mile High Run Club went on to open two additional locations, both built on the same visual language established in this initial studio.