Market Hall in Uppsala, Sweden

On May 9, 2002 the old Market Hall in Uppsala, Sweden was severely damaged in a fire. Unfortunately, nothing much remained of the old building but two brick walls, yet after two years of hard work the Hall was restored as a fresh vegetable, fish and meat market featuring several top quality restaurants.

From the earliest planning stages the owner of the restaurants, Svenssons Krogar, made the decision to use choice materials and furniture designs for the restoration, with each restaurant presenting its own specific style. Gothenburg-based Diroco Sound and Light came into the planning process quite early and therefore had the opportunity to influence the lighting with a well thought out scheme. Diroco set out to integrate Martin intelligent luminaires along with conventional lighting to create the exact environment the client was looking for. 

ShowDesigner
As the building was not yet complete when Diroco was contracted to investigate possible lighting solutions, they depended upon the Martin ShowDesigner lighting design software package to create scale models for the truss-construction as well as light calculations. It was, among other things, the ShowDesigner that convinced the client that the new look would be visually striking.

And because it was important to keep white light over the tables so that faces and food look their natural best, another important achievement by Diroco was to convince the client of intelligent lighting’s flexibility, i.e. that automated lighting doesn’t necessarily equate to disco looks but rather a flexible environment.

Flexible restaurant lighting
For one of the restaurants, the Åbar, whose original curved brick walls are the architectural focus of the room, Diroco incorporated surface mounted Alien 05 Stem Mount color changers working together with a small pattern projector. The color changes from the Aliens, slow and warm, work with the design projections to make the room an appealing and stimulating environment of changing atmospheres.

The largest of Market Hall’s restaurants is a multi-purpose space - brunch-bar, lunch-restaurant, evening-restaurant, bar and nightclub. Therefore, it was important for the lighting to set the various moods and thereby define the activities. Due to a high, open ceiling, the lighting fixtures were positioned in a large truss, which also fit in well with the room’s industrial interior. Stylish Alien 02 full spectrum color changers illuminate the ceiling in warm colors by day, with more daring combinations from Martin MAC 250 Kryptons, Wizard effect lights and Atomic strobes taking over for the evening nightclub.

Lighting control
In order to integrate conventional fixtures with the Martin lights, Diroco chose to work with a dimmer system that reads and controls DMX with regular wall panels so the staff can easily control the intensity of both the conventional and Martin lights. At night however the DJ switches to DJ-mode, which enables the Martin Xciter to take control of the Martin lights, although the staff can still control the conventional lighting. This made it possible to easily switch from daylight to evening light to disco light. All four restaurants operate via the same dimmer and can therefore be easily controlled by small, legible controllers on the wall. Additionally, because of the previous fire, the dimmer system is connected to the fire alarm and in case of an emergency all Martin lights go to white.

The well-planned lighting scheme and elegant furniture has become a functional and often praised complementary duo. Lighting design accolades go to Marcus Persson and Lina Denne of Diroco with Marcus also handling the technical design and programming. Installation was also by Diroco.