“Impact” for BCSC

The British Council of Shopping Centres is an organization set up to represent the retail property industry by providing a forum for networking, research, representation to Government and developing partnerships. Their annual conference this year was held at The Sage, Gateshead in Newcastle.

As part of the conference a temporary structure was set up adjacent to the Sage, overlooking the spectacular Millennium Bridge and lit up with an array of colourful lights, gobo patterns, logos and projected written content.

The lighting design was put together by Martin Lupton, Laura Mackay and James Simpson of BDP Lighting. BDP Lighting are the specialist lighting design team of Building Design Partnership - the UK’s largest architecturally-led, multi-discipline practice. James explains the intention of the lighting set-up.

“The theme of this year’s conference was IMPACT, and the lighting was a major contributor to the awareness of the event for anyone walking along the Quay Side in Newcastle.”

“The equipment we used was; LightJockey, Lightcorder, Exterior 600s and 200s, MAC 700 profiles and MAC Domes. Because of the inaccessible positions of the fittings, we wanted lights that would be reliable so that we didn’t have to fix them once they were installed and very easy to control from a remote operating position.”

“We wanted to work with Martin Professional, to support our relationship, and because we knew that the equipment chosen would give the dynamic range of effects we needed to fulfil the scope of our design.”

“Because of the versatility of the products, especially the MAC 700s, we were able to create hundreds of different looks, feels and emotions on the side of the structure that we had imagined prior to commissioning. It also allowed us to account for unexpected changes or obstructions that couldn’t be planned for, which usually would have scuttled an idea, but were easily overcome using a laptop and LightJockey.”

Like all projects, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and the actual placement of fixtures from what had been planned was quite marked.
 

“The original locations we asked for would have been 15 meters away from the structure allowing us to get the best angle of projection. We eventually got two towers that were 5 meters away from the tent wall and 40 meters apart from each other. We asked for them to be built 14 meters high but ended up with something considerably taller! The luminaires were placed on the top of two platforms of these towers where they faced the full effect of a Geordie wind and survived! In reality the positions were too close to be ideal, but the versatility of the MAC 700’s enabled us to cope with this constraint.”

“The rotating Gobos allowed us to display logos and written content and no matter what the angle we projected from we could make the writing legible. Having CMY mixing makes a great range of colours and we particularly enjoyed using the deep purple (by mixing Cyan and Magenta to full) as this looked especially nice behind white gobos, like stars. Of course it definitely helps when all of your fittings use CMY, so we could make the MAC 700s match the Exterior 600s and 200s”

The infrastructure of cables and components were supplied by Stage Electrics in Gateshead, while Martin Pro provided the lights.

“We were always confident that the Martin equipment would be reliable and perform as advertised, and this event didn’t disappoint.”

Keep an eye out this coming February when BDP Lighting will be teaming up again with Martin Architectural at the Design Museum for ‘Switched on London’.