"It was the first question I asked myself when looking for a venue," explained Amanda Davis of AD Design, on her brief for the movie launch. "What is the most futuristic building in London?" Spielberg had done the groundwork, he’d consulted with think-tanks and city planners, but Davis didn’t have that luxury, "so I read through the synopsis again and asked myself, ‘what will London be like?’"
By an outrageous coincidence, a brand new building was about to be handed from constructor to tenant, one that fulfilled everything Davis could want - the new home for the Greater London Authority. "The building looks fantastic, a glass egg on the banks of the Thames, which is very similar to the central building in the movie." But . . . "there was just a four-day window we could use before the London Assembly moved in," so Davis had to get the premiére moved forward a day from its original schedule to make the deadline. Her efforts were well rewarded.
"It was a very different event: this was not a venue ever likely to be used again for such a purpose, and its interiors are quite unique." Designed by Foster and Partners, the GLA’s glass egg is new thinking, but contains some old familiars. The nine storeys are connected internally by a gently ascending one-kilometre spiral ramp; visitors to Harrogate Conference Centre will be used to that idea, if not on such a grand scale. What it does do, and surely this was Foster and Partners’ conceit, is provide connectivity throughout the interior, a connectivity Davis didn’t fail to exploit. "The openness of the interior allowed me to design a show people could walk through." Immersion might be the adjective - Davis’s use of slow moving dancers communicating a surreal environment.
Nine separate areas made for a widespread event: a main bar and food hall, a reception area, a performance zone (created in the area where, just a few weeks later, the Assembly would sit and debate Londoners’ lives), a gallery, effects area, another bar (for those who walk the full nine floors?) and, of course, a VIP enclave.
Davis marshalled some discrete audio and lighting expertise, and coupled it to dance and costume to evoke the futuristic milieu. Utopium’s Colin Bodenham designed multiple systems to light both inside and out, and to great effect. Three dozen Studio Due City Colors and a further two dozen 400W MBIs programmed by Dave Ross produced some particularly striking views for those lucky enough to be stood on the opposing shore.
Inside, Bodenham went for ‘painting surfaces’ of which the GLA building presented plenty, calling on pastels and patterns to draw distinction area to area. To do so saw him use the full battery of modern effects lighting, Martin Professional MACs (500 and 600), High End Cyberlights, Technobeams, Studio Spots and Studio Colors (you name them, they were there) and Opti Solar 250s. Each area variously programmed by Simon Harborough, Stuart Farrell, Craig Saunders, Jules Blagg and Jason Fletcher from a small battery of Hog and Avo desks. From a 50-year perspective all that was lacking was a modern take on the lava lamp.
Audio was equally diverse, Britannia Row’s event specialist Jim Alexander bringing in a variety of d&b’s smaller full-range cabinets, cleverly using B2 subs left on their wheels pointing skywards to fill the central atrium with a surprisingly well-contained low end.
"I’d specifically brought in XTA 226s for control, imagining that in such an open environment I’d have to time align the different areas to each other. Curiously, this proved unnecessary." Which indicates some int
