Essex-based Pembroke Design was appointed to create the interiors. As a totally separate element to the sound design of the project, CP's Colin Pattenden decided to show their new side-lit, etched substrate LED panel to the designers, who sought an eye-catching form of bar illumination and were suitably impressed to order 10 to go at the rear of the bars.
The CP Sound LED panels are all etched with an attractive montage of pebbles. Four sit behind the upstairs bar and six at the rear of the downstairs bar. They are made from a special 10mm thick white, clear glass with polished edges to allow the passage of light into the etchings. The engravings were created by Tony Harris, and applied to one side of the panel, before the panels were all toughened to ensure robustness and safety.
Four more panels, imprinted with vinyl pebbles, lead the way to the toilets. Lighting for all panels is DMX-controlled by a Pulsar Minipiece. The same Minipiece (plus a 9-channel DMX power-pack) controls 30 CP48 RGB colour-changing spotlights, another LED lighting product specially developed by CP Sound for its installations. The wall-mounted CP48s (dotted strategically upstairs and downstairs) are colour matched to the speakers on each floor - silver for upstairs and black for downstairs. The downstairs fixtures are hidden behind the speakers, mounted on the wall below the specially extended speaker brackets.
Pattenden again opted for JBL: the silver speakers upstairs are a special JBL edition (dubbed the 'Control 13' by Pattenden), seven of which were chosen for their ability to deliver quiet and clear background sound in the top bar. Downstairs sound - usually a noisier and livelier environment - is distributed via seven of the more conventional JBL Control 28s and three JBL Control 25s. The Control 28s were chosen for their thumpy bass and minimal low frequency problems. The music source is a Rolec hard disk player with remote volume controls behind both bars, and the system is split into two zones (up and down), and powered with a Cloud preamp.
The building's primarily glass walls proved challenging acoustic material to work with, and sound leakage issues both within the venue, and between it and its immediate outside environment and the nearby houses, were also major issues. The audio design took into account the rigorous environmental noise pollution guidelines in place, and sound is contained by dampening the bottom end, by not installing any subs and by ensuring there's nothing below 150 Hz. Downstairs, all the speakers are mounted on the outer walls pointing inwards.
The CP Sound team has also adapted the building's pre-existing architectural lighting - via a series of duo-colour dichroic filters - giving a new look but retaining continuity with other buildings in the complex. The filters give turquoise in the middle and bleed to magenta at the outside, imbibing The Terraces with a warm, inviting night-time glow.
(Lee Baldock)
