The Pieterskerk is a landmark of Leiden and can be seen from afar. Construction on the venue, which is a basilica in the late Gothic style, began around 1390 and continued at various intervals until the 1560s.
The deconsecrated building now serves as a major venue for TV recordings, corporate events, concerts or education, and since 2001 has undergone major restoration to convert it into a technologically advanced space.
The venue's directors wanted to upgrade the building's lighting facilities, enabling them to create a multitude of atmospheres reflecting its varying usages. To achieve this, they approached Netherlands-based Harry de Kort at The Light Connection, to realise the project.
The new fixtures had to be powerful enough to light the massive space, yet flexible enough to address all the requirements of a venue with such a variety of uses. "Not only did the fixture have to be able to create both bold and subtle colours, but it also had to produce a white light of high enough quality to illuminate activities such as exams," explains Harry. "From a practical perspective, they needed to reduce the venue's energy costs, look good, dim very well, and be very quiet in operation. It was a huge ask in a single fixture, but the Inspire delivers on every level."
The Chroma-Q Inspire is designed to transform the look and feel of a space. The fully homogenised beam provides beautifully mixed soft pastels, bold saturates and clean whites, making the Inspire ideal for both entertainment and house lighting. The unit's extensive RGBW colour-mixing palette can be controlled via DMX to provide a seamless lighting transition from a stage into a room.
An energy-efficient, compact LED design provides reduced maintenance and running costs, with convection cooling keeping the fixture silent.
"The technicians, advisors and the director of the venue were amazed and blown away by the high output and pleasing exterior appearance of the Inspires," says Harry. "The housing of the fixture merged very well with the beautiful interior. It was a unanimous decision to invest in the Inspire fixtures."
Harry demoed the Inspire fixtures using a Jands Vista console.
"The producer of the events at the venue, Jaap, was also very impressed by the Jands Vista control system, so Pieterskerk also decided to invest in a Vista M1 console with 1024 DMX channels and an Ethernet node, to be able to control all the lights individually or simultaneously."
"I attended a presentation at Pieterskerk in January 2014, and the Chroma-Q Inspires have transformed the atmosphere of the venue," says Harry. "Everyone continues to be impressed by them."
The Chroma-Q Inspire and new Inspire Mini fixtures range will be showcased at Prolight & Sound, Frankfurt in March on the stand of UK dealer, A.C. Entertainment Technologies (stand location 9.0, E63).
(Jim Evans)
