National Building Museum relies on Chauvet

USA - Awe-struck. That sums up the feeling that visitors experience when they step into The National Building Museum. Located a short distance from the U.S. Capitol, the stately Italian Renaissance Revival structure that was built in 1887 is breathtaking in its scope and elegance. Its vast central hall has housed presidential inaugural balls from the time of Benjamin Harrison through Barack Obama. The Corinthian columns that line its great room are among the tallest in the world.
The Bozzuto Management Company recently held an employee award ceremony at the museum. Bozzuto Management focuses on creating extraordinary experiences for their residents and wanted to provide that same level of detail and care for their employees. To create this upbeat atmosphere, while accenting the building’s impressive architectural features, a multi-faceted lighting design by Brett Angstadt was anchored by over 120 Chauvet Professional LED fixtures.
“When you create an event design in a building like this, it’s obviously very exciting,” said Angstadt of Showtime Sound. “At the same time, however, this is also a corporate event - so your design has to take that into account. You can’t simply light the building as a museum; you have to take care of the event aspect of the evening, which is why you need to have very flexible fixtures.”
Exemplifying the flexibility that Angstadt had in mind were the 60 Rogue R2 Washes in his rig. He positioned 20 of the RGBW moving heads on the upstage and downstage truss for stage wash during the awards segment of the event. Later, when the concert and party started, he set the Rogues loose, creating concert-like dynamics, colour effects and aerial movements.
The remaining 32 Rogue R2 Washes in Angstadt’s rig served quite a different function. They were positioned around the building’s 80-foot-high Corinthian columns to provide dramatic uplighting. Angstadt used the Rogues to accent the columns in whites during the awards ceremonies; then turned to vivid floor to ceiling colour washing during the entertainment segment.
“We had no problem covering the column with light thanks to the Rogue’s throw distance,” he said. “Light from the Rogues reached all the way up to the ceiling when we wanted it to, but sometimes we elected to illuminate only part of the columns for a more subtle look. When we washed the columns in colour, they glowed quite vividly – it was really impressive.”
Angstadt called on a collection of 24 WELL Quad-M battery powered fixtures to uplight smaller structures in the hall. He also used 20 pixel mapped Nexus 4x4 COB LED panels and eight STRIKE 4 multi formatted fixtures in his well-rounded event rig.
(Jim Evans)

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