Central to the 12,000sq.m building is the 3,400sq.m Armani Teatro, which caters for a variety of events, including fashion shows. With simple reorganization, the black-box theatre, normally laid out for catwalk shows, can form a proscenium stage for drama, a thrust arrangement for dance, or be emptied out for use as an art gallery or a site-specific installation. It can also be used as a lecture hall, convention area, or even as a temporary cinema or nightclub.
The technical systems were designed by Change Performing Arts (CPA) with lighting designer AJ Weissbard, who was brought in as project designer, to enable the adaptation of the space and include tools for lighting control which can grow as technology develops without interfering with the architecture. The systems focus on three main areas: a flexible grid and hanging system allowing for different configurations, two unique dimmable fluorescent runways with colour-changing capabilities and, most importantly, an advanced lighting system with a sizable inventory of equipment.
Some 340 ETC Source Fours make up the majority of the conventional lighting rig, which is designed to complement fashion shows, dance, music, drama and art installations as well as other events. The dimmable runways were developed by Weissbard in collaboration with Starkstrom Electronics (SE) at the request of Armani. Integrated in the floor of the theatre as a smooth auto-illuminating light surface, they are made up of standard fluorescent tubes manipulated to produce white, red, green and blue, and controlled from the lighting console through 514 digital control channels. "I would never have thought to control such a sophisticated lighting configuration without the networkable patch I designed with ETC," said Weissbard.
The networking, cabling and patching systems lie at the heart of the infrastructure. A variety of power systems is available and more than 300 x 3kW and 100 x 5kW dimmer outlets are located around the grid in nine raceways, hidden in the floor, around the perimeter and in potential control positions. The circuits are unique and run in a dimmer-per-channel manner from ETC Sensor digital dimmers which have a variety of advanced functions, each being protected and isolated in case of power fluctuation. Provisions have also been made for larger power needs such as additional special dimming and distribution through service points strategically placed around the venue. Control is via an ETC Expression 3 console, working over ETC's powerful ethernet system, ETCNet2.
Running parallel with the console, an ETC Unison control system allows for simple playback of house lighting by the general Armani staff. Two Unison systems have overriding control of the entire building's lighting - including the general houselights, the special fluorescent rings around the theatre and general worklights, as well as the theatre's grid light and tribune lights.
Rome-based lighting company Ianiro supplied the majority of the lighting, dimming, control and network for the building, working closely with the technical design team. Jeremy Roberts, ETC's field project manager, emphasised the user-friendliness of the system: "By incorporating an architectural control system we can create lighting pictures on the stage, then save them into the architectural system and play them back from a simple button panel, so that when a qualified lighting engineer has set up and programmed a show, a non-technical person can operate and run it."
(Lee B
