ES Projects, a trading division of ES Group Ltd, designed, built and commissioned the structure with the support of specialist sub-contractor Stage One who installed and commissioned key features such as the LED lighting and Angel flying winches. ES Projects called on its experience in the events industry to provide training and choreography for the Wine Angels.
The wine tower is a steel framed, glass clad structure designed to act as a vertical four sided temperature controlled wine cellar, operated in full view of the hotel guests and bar customers. The total capacity of the tower is 3,840 bottles. Wine bottles are stored in specially designed racks providing microclimate areas that maintain the correct temperatures for the red and white wines as well as comfort cooling for the Wine Angels and operators.
Wine Angels, equipped with flying harnesses, perform acrobatic routines to music and automated lighting sequences as they ascend the tower to retrieve the wine bottles. The winches that raise and lower the Angels are controlled at an operator station located within the tower at ground level. The lighting sequences are specific to each bottle and as such also guide the Angel to the correct bottle.
The LED lighting used to provide the lighting sequences, consists of over 800 HexaPix; a unique media server to pixel software product that was developed by Stage One in house and controlled by the company's Qmotion control system.
In order to provide the precise, controlled flying required to deliver the Wine Angel to the correct bottle, Stage One supplied an automation package specially developed to enable their NextQ software to directly control the winch positioning drives.
Even though the project time frame was reduced by three weeks to ensure completion before Christmas, ES Projects delivered on time and to budget.
Other key sub-contractors include Adam Basset, Lighting Designer; Momentum; Richard Sinclair, Sound Designer; Jeremy Thom, Designer; Peter Roberts, M&E Designer; Unusual Rigging; Optima Glass; Alpha Electricals; Wrights Plastics; Total Air Systems and Sheetfabs.
(Claire Beeson)
