Hotel Morje in Portoroz, Slovenia

The decision to execute the project was not made until late November 1999, and wishing to capitalize on the approaching Christmas and Millennium New Year holidays with its heavy guest attendance left little time to provide an acceptable solution and thereby presented a unique lighting challenge. Budget is always a prime consideration and this project was no exception. With its four structures, the sheer magnitude of the facades in square meters requiring illumination was a challenge.

Miami based Intermedia Systems Group was called in to determine the feasibility of providing a unique lighting solution, within budget and within the tight time frame. Intermedia currently provides technical and artistic thematic designs and consulting services for a variety of European clients including several major Casinos and commercial companies including lighting, audio, video, communications and theme applications.

Lighting Designer Mike Quinn first established the ‘rules of engagement’ for the project. According to Quinn "an LD faced with time constraints on a project needs to have a clear understanding with the client first. Although it is the LD’s job to ‘interpret’ the basic desires of the client into a functional, reliable and attractive end product, the difficulty arises where the fine line between ‘designer and client’ gets blurred and results in the client inadvertently influencing the LD’s design. This usually compromises the design effort. In this particular project, it was agreed that Quinn and Intermedia would have complete autonomy to design the system within a flexible guideline. This allowed us to be expeditious in the analysis of the job requirements, the design phase and through the installation process. The Hoteli Morje management group and its Director were extremely cooperative and that fact influenced the end results in a positive way."

Quinn continues: "In spite of this fact, without the outstanding cooperation and support of Martin Professional A/S in Denmark the job simply would not have been possible." According to Quinn, "the response from Martin has always been professional and the product range allows for flexibility not achievable with other products, and the Hoteli Morje job is evidence of that."

"In spite of the large facades, I was able to employ only (8) Martin 575 watt Exterior 600’s and a single PAL-1200 for effects. Due to the balcony structures, and the need for careful placement of the fixtures it was essential to determine two factors at the outset. First, our setback distances for each fixture individually which varied from fixture to fixture, secondly the angle of incidence and the achievable field sizes were calculated. Management’s legitimate concerns over light intrusion into the hotel rooms were taken into consideration. We decided to diffuse all the fixtures to avoid ‘hot spots’ and achieve a more uniform field over the entire washed surfaces.

Last, utilizing Martin’s ProScenium software package exclusively, we programmed the system to coincide with the hours of operation needed, to establish complimentary color sequences and cues, and the entire system operates every evening autonomously with no human intervention." Quinn concludes; "I think the results speak for themselves. The client was extremely pleased, we completed the job on time and on budget in a single month, and you only need to watch the tourists and guests as they pause either walking or driving by as the lights run through their cues to see that the project was successful in its impact."