The designed by fashionable architect of the day Benjamin Wyatt, was first opened as a casino in 1827 and in its latest incarnation, it is rated as one of the best and most popular private members clubs in London.
The venue has recently undergone complete refurbishment, with an interior design by Jeffrey Beers that has injected new vitality into the building. The look is of the sophisticated end of 1980s retro, offering a spectacular gaming room, private gambling facilities and five floors of upscale bars and restaurants plus the fifty below club lounge downstairs - all aimed at entertaining both gamblers and non-gamblers alike.
The sound and lighting installation was undertaken by touch media, whose Iain McLachlan specified 24 Met3 RGB down-lighting fixtures for the low ceiling of fifty below's 'catwalk'. These are recessed into the ceiling and provide subtle colour changing effects in the club environment.
They were chosen because McLachlan has used them before and reckons they are "the brightest currently available on the market". They are also reliable and easy to fit he adds, saying that metropolis is an excellent company to deal with, and their service and support is second to none.
Out in fifty's main entrance hall on the first landing of the grand staircase is a large mirror etched with a rose design. To create a subtle and memorable lighting effect behind this, McLachlan fixed two Met3 73mm pitch 600mm colour changing linear strips to the back of the mirror.
They had initially intended to use six strips, he explained, but the fixtures proved so bright that that wasn't necessary. The light reflects back off the wall behind the mirror and the sidelight catches the slightly indented etched shape, gently highlighting the contours of the rose.
Again, he chose the Met3 strip over other products because of past experience - he's used it in both clubs and domestic installations - and reckons it's one of the best-engineered and most robust led strip products on the market.
The met3 fixtures at fifty London were programmed and are stored on a pulsar replay unit. Along with all the other lighting throughout the venue, the master controller is a Crestron system.
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
