US trade body ESTA named ETC and Martin Professional winners of the prestigious Rock Our World Awards which recognise outstanding, innovative achievements by ESTA members. Only a few weeks earlier, the Germany-based Professional Lighting Designers' Association (PLDA) presented the Grand Mosque with a Recognition Award for Best New Project. Other awards bestowed on the Grand Mosque in the past have included the IALD Award of Merit, IES Award of Excellence and two Middle East Lighting Design Awards for Project of the Year and Best Public Building Lighting Project.
With lighting designed by Speirs and Major Associates (SaMA), over 1,200 fixtures - including ETC Source Four luminaires - are controlled by 21 ETC Congo Light Servers and 15 ETC Unison processors supplied by Oasis Enterprises. 17 custom-built equipment racks and 52 customised dimming racks contain almost 2,300 circuits - Relays, SCR- and ETC Matrix Mk II SineWave dimming - that are controlled via 276 ETCNet3 DMX/RDM Gateways.
ETC controls product manager Sarah Clausen, who was also the lead programmer of the Congo systems on site, says: "The Grand Mosque project spanned seven years of work across multiple departments and international offices within ETC and in cooperation with Martin Professional, with whom we are honoured to share the Rock Our World Award, to achieve the design ideal of Speirs and Major Associates. The end result is a magnificent but subtle effect that stretches the boundaries and technologies of lighting design and is wholly deserving of these awards."
For more on the lighting for the Grand Mosque, see the article from Lighting&Sound International's May 2009 issue - available free online as a Digital edition.
