The prestigious LCF, a constituent College of the University of the Arts London, offers courses and business training in fashion, journalism, beauty therapy, and lifestyle industries. Their main Rootstein Hopkins auditorium space at Oxford Circus is used for a variety of fashion events, including catwalk shows of students' work and big-name celebrity guest lectures.
ACSP were chosen by LCF from a number of theatre & drama installations companies to work on the project, which aimed to dramatically reduce lighting power consumption and provide a modern, easy-to-operate, permanent in-house system. The College wanted to upgrade their existing conventional fixtures to a totally LED-based solution, to give them more control over the auditorium lighting in terms of positioning, colour changing, effects, and brightness.
ACSP impressed the College with their wide choice of leading LED lighting and control console brands, and the level of service & backup offered - including technical support and training.
ACSP's general manager, Lance Bromhead demoed various lighting fixtures at the company's High Wycombe office. In addition, he provided further demos of the suggested LED fixtures on-site at LCF.
The required rig needed to be flexible in order to fulfill the potential of the Rootstein Hopkins auditorium space, which is multi-configurable - allowing them to use it as one large space or three smaller, different-sized zones.
For catwalk events, the College uses the space as one auditorium, installing a temporary runway surface, which is lit either side by the various LED fixtures.
ACSP specified an array of LED models, including Robe Robin DLS Profiles for lighting the walls and catwalk. The units enable the College to shape the beam into a square light to be projected onto the catwalk, and provide gobos, colour and dimming.
GLP Impression X4 moving lights provide an array of colours and can make a very wide or narrow moving beam, to wash around the building walls or floor, or provide a strobe effect.
Spotlight ProfiLED 200W high efficiency LED Profiles from their energy-saving and award-winning Green Line range, offer an adjustable beam of white light which can be focused directly onto the catwalk.
Finally, Chroma-Q Studio Force 12 variable white LED softlights provide additional natural daylight white, camera-friendly lighting at the end of the catwalk runway. ACSP also provided all the DMX cabling and distribution system for the new LED lighting rig.
For control, ACSP specified the compact yet powerful Jands Vista S1 console, which is loaded with the Vista v2 software and designed to be used with a PC, monitor, & DMX dongle. LCF are using the Jands Vista S1 with a 4096-channel USB dongle, and a touchscreen monitor.
Summarising his experience of working with ACSP, learning environment manager, James Rutherford comments, "A.C. Special Projects were brilliant from start to finish on the installation, and pushed the boundaries on the amount of fixtures we could acquire within a defined budget. Their enthusiastic approach to the brief and considered understanding of our specific requirements was a major factor in ACSP winning the contract for London College of Fashion."
(Jim Evans)
