Martin Professional Lights Up Britain’s Summer Of Sport

November 06, 2012

Britain’s amazing summer of sport came to a fitting conclusion on 10th September with events across the UK. London was a natural focal point, with BT marking the occasion with a breathtaking light and fireworks display at its landmark BT Tower in the center of the city, where Martin Professional lighting fixtures and LED panels accented the company’s involvement in events surrounding a momentous few months.

BT Tower
This was just the climax for Martin, whose involvement in events surrounding this historic period had started way back in October 2009, with the installation of the BT Tower’s 360º LED information screen. Installed around the outside of the Tower’s 36th and 37th floors, primarily to display a 1000 day countdown to the start of the Olympics, the screen is 59m long, 4.8m tall and is made up of 177 interconnectedLC Plus Series LED panels.

Visible from across the city, BT worked with the Press Association to deliver live Olympic news as it happened, ensuring that the screen keeps the Tower as a visual focal point of the city and an integral part of the company’s summer celebrations.

The 10th September event saw the screen complemented by a range of Martin Exterior 200™ and Exterior 400™ luminaires, installed on the tower’s galleries and around its top. Working in synchronization with a spectacular fireworks display, they ensured BT gave a suitably celebratory send off to the summer, enjoyed by thousands of onlookers.

Two more landmark installations saw the company’s fixtures deliver stunning visuals throughout the summer of sport.

London City Hall
At London City Hall - on the south bank of the Thames by Tower Bridge - UK energy company EDF invited experiential design agency MET Studio to devise a spectacular screen-based display. Organized by event production company Icon, MET Studio worked with Drive Productions to devise a three-tier, pyramid-shaped Martin Professional EC-20LED video screen. The eye-catching presentation ran continually on a 15 minute loop, its mixture of graphic and real life content keeping onlookers engaged throughout.

The lightweight, cable-free EC-20 panels, supplied by Blackburn-based lighting and visuals rental company HSL, were used to create three separate but interconnected screens, suspended from the building’s structural frame between its external glazing and ovoid spiral stairway. The location of the screens and their semi-transparent construction gave a holographic feel to the imagery, the action flowing between the screens and appearing to take place on the stairway behind them.

The German Gymnasium
Another key location which utilized Martin LED panels was located opposite St Pancras station, London’s Eurostar terminal and point at which many thousands of European visitors arrive in the city. The German Gymnasium was used as a corporate hospitality center for the duration and after extensive testing, the choice fell on Martin LC Plus video screens to wrap around the building’s façade.

A total of 104 panels were installed, displaying eye-catching moving graphics, highlighting how technology is used in the advanced medical methods used by contemporary sporting teams.

“We are very proud to have been involved in events leading up to, and throughout, a sporting summer that will live long in the memory of people both in Britain and right across the globe,” says Martin Professional’s UK sales director Mike Walker.

“For us it has been about much more than two months of 2012. It has been three years since the BT Tower screen was installed to count down 1000 days to the beginning of the events. There are very few manufacturers whose equipment has been relied on for such a long period of time for the events surrounding the summer’s sport.”

And while these might be over, the BT Tower screen will ensure that the company’s iconic landmark will continue to be a focal point of the city’s skyline.