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THE 7 STAR EMIRATES
PALACE HOTEL
ABU DHABI. |
LSI Projects first became involved with this project in 2001, and again in 2003 winning the international tender for Package 13b, the production lighting and stage engineering systems. These are located in the magnificent art deco auditorium centrally housed in the entertainment complex, strategically placed between the two lavishly equipped hotels. The whole project has been rumoured to have cost £2 billion and officially opened on March 7th 2005.
The technical specification was prepared by Jerry Godden and his team at Theatre Projects Consultants. The brief was to provide conference and theatre facilities that would enable large corporate clients to stage international conferences, product launches as well as providing local facilities for the emirate of Abu Dhabi. The auditorium can accommodate around 1200 people in very comfortable seating surrounded by lavish décor.
The late arrival of Theatre Projects into the design team realised a number of problems to be solved as the building works had been proceeding prior to them being appointed. One such problem was of the limited load capacity of the roof structure and access to the installed system.
The Stage Engineering System comprises of a system of chain hoists and trusses from which adjustable masking and stage lights are suspended, a framed flown film screen unit, motorised house curtain, flown acoustic reflector ceiling panels and rolling acoustic towers, fixed and movable curtain tracks with stage draperies and masking.
The trusses were designed to carry the lighting equipment, stage curtains and masking together with a complex set of acoustic reflectors containing a concert lighting rig. The acoustic reflectors are suspended on 3 trusses and include adjustment to allow them to be angled. Ceiling panels made of fibreglass, manufactured by Wenger Corp of USA, together with the 11 free standing stage towers provide an acoustic shell that may be deployed around musical performers. With the shell in place the performers can hear themselves and the music is reinforced and blended before it is projected into the audience. The panels are suspended from arms attached to trusses and chain hoists. When not in use the panels are lowered to the stage level and rotated manually to a vertical position before being raised and stored within the upper area of the "fly tower".
In use the panels are lowered and rotated to an appropriate angle. Panels house orchestra lighting with mercury switches to turn off when tilted fed via a unique LSI designed flip flop type cable management system linked to termination boxes located on the upper steel roof beams. Panels incorporate a pipe at the rear from which masking borders may be hung.
A total of 10 motorised truss sections each 22 metres long are provided. LSI selected Medium Duty truss from Total Fabrications, having previously worked with Total Fabs successfully on a number of large scale projects. 3 trusses house the over stage acoustic reflectors, one supports the film screen and associated masking which also acts as the No 1 electric, 3 support the 3 further over stage lighting bars, one supports the rear curtains or cyclorama cloth and a further two form side trusses for lighting and curtaining.
Each truss is suspended from the very latest generation of Liftkit motorised chain hoists each rated to carry a working load of 1250kg. A total of 3 motors are provided for each truss due to the average lifting load requirement of 1000kg per 22 metre truss. As the system is likely to be used by a wide variety of personnel it was felt that the highest level of safety should be in built to the system. The Liftkit SB 8.2 motors feature a lifting speed of 4 metres per minute, two independent dc brakes, sliding clutch for over load protection, encoder for positional control together with operational and under/over load sensing. The motors are fully compliant with the new BGV-C1 that replaces the VGB70 standard. This standard, developed in Germany, covers the requirements of a suspension system over an audience.
Use of these motors allows the trusses to be suspended without the use of additional safety devices such as load arrestors.
The motors are controlled from a central control system using LSI Project's unique ARC control system now installed in 8 venues around the world. ARC is used throughout the Auditorium for controlling working lights, house lights, non dims and the stage engineering system. The ARC system allows each truss to be selected and then lifted or lowered to a specified height via the wall mounted touch screen or via a remote blue tooth driven control panel. All motor control panels only being operable when a dead mans handle is held on by a second operative. The touch screen reports fault conditions as well as detailing actual height measurements. The ARC system limits the number of hoists that can be moved simultaneously in order to restrict the dynamic shock load on the building steelwork.
Sets of black and red curtains are provided so that the stage dressing can be matched to stage different events. Curtain tracks were provided from Hall Stage with electrically operated tracks controlled from the ARC system.
The lighting system is designed to provide high levels of illumination from what will probably a relatively fixed rig. Over the stage four lighting trusses are provided. The luminaire stock comprises of 30 zoom and 60 fixed beam cool profiles, 30 ADB C103 1.2kW Prism Convex, 12 ADB SH20 2kW TV wide angle Fresnels, 60 Thomas Par Cans with the cyclorama illuminated by 18 of the very popular ADB ACP1004 cyclorama flood.
With a 22 metre truss width a total of 4 six lamp bars are provided for each truss. On these trusses 2 flip flop trays are provided to carry the necessary DMX data, Ethernet, Working Lights, 3kW Non Dim supplies and 3kW and 5kW dimmed supplies down to the socket boxes fitted at the base of each flip flop. The dimmed outlets appear on Socapex outlets for 3kW dimmers and CEE 32 Amp for 5kW split down via MCB's to 3kW CEE outlets. A quantity of Chroma Q colour scrollers and power supplies are provided for use on the stage as well as front of house luminaires.
Dedicated front of house lighting positions are provided built into the auditorium ceiling accessed via catwalks and technical corridors. With such a high shaped ceiling care was taken to ensure that the long projection distances would still allow high levels of light to illuminate the stage. Side lighting positions are achieved by carefully designing the booms to be flowed into the room shapes. The bridges are equipped with a combination of 1.2kW and 600 watt zoom profiles.
The lighting control system is centred around an ADB Phoenix 10XT lighting console with facilities for generic and motorised luminaires. The system is equipped with 4 visual displays to ensure the operator is rapidly fed with all the necessary information. A tracking Phoenix RB back-up system is provided together with an extensive ADB Ethernet network with outlets throughout the installation.
The control system links through to a complete ADB Eurodim 3 modular dimming and non dim system housed in a purpose built dimming and electrical room located above the Auditorium ceiling to keep cable runs to an acceptable length. A total of 288 x 3kW and 36 x 5kW dimmers with 24 x 3kW Non dims are provided housed in 4 Eurodim 3 cabinets. Also housed within the dimmer room is the network rack allowing Ethernet and DMX patching to be carried out.
LSI's project manager was Andrew Nu who supervised a team of primarily UK personnel with some local support to complete the installation. The project took some 15 months to complete including completing all of the local submittals and staff training. |
