In April, the Ministry of Architecture asked Walter industries, a wholly owned subsidiary of GVA Lighting of Mississauga, Ontario Canada, to design and install a color-changing lighting system to help revolutionize the image of the amphitheatre.
Within two and a half months, the team designed, built, installed and commissioned 2182 custom PixeLED fixtures. These illuminate the 7000 square meters of the matte white polycarbonate “paraglider, wing” shaped roof, designed by Valery Keskevich, Chief Architect of the Brest Design Institute
This roof became a backlit “screen” of changing color. Each fixture is one pixel of the “screen” and is individually addressed to allow virtually unlimited variation in light patterns, creating a monumental and dynamic light show.
For this application, the PixeLED in itself would not do the job, so a new fixture had to be designed, namely the SQL300-LED/RGB. With the installation 1440 of these fixtures, controlled by the same system as the PixeLED, the transformation was complete!
The SQL300-LED/RGB fixtures incorporate Nichia LEDs. The interior (or audience) side of the rainbow uses 30 tri-color diodes per fixture and the exterior side uses 20.
The system is controlled by means of 604 commutators, 18 splitters, and one central computer. Proprietary software allows for DMX addressing of each PixeLED and SQL fixture from the central computer. Each fixture can be remotely programmed and tested without the need for physical contact. The program can be run in manual or automatic mode.
