Since its opening in 1990, the arena has hosted around 40 international competitions of different kinds of sports. After the 2006 renovation, it became Azerbaijan's home of gymnastics, accommodating a number of major international rhythmic gymnastics tournaments. During the European games the arena will be used for all the judo, sambo and wrestling competitions.
The arena facilities had to be radically reorganized for the European Games and improved with the construction of a drawing hall, an athlete's canteen, a media Centre, a commentary studio, a broadcasting centre and server rooms for processing the results of the competitions. The 7,500-seat auditorium has been completely refreshed, enlarged and provided with modern, comfortable seating.
During the reconstruction phase, a new crown-shaped outer cover has been developed in order to completely renovate the look of the Heydar Aliyev Complex, wrapping it up in a decorative, eye-catching sort of canopy sparkling with thousands of lights.
Installed starting from September 2014, this huge crown is made up of a metal skeleton put together by diagonally mounted beams that form a recurring rhombus grid. Griven lighting designers have been working on this project since the very beginning of the construction, in order to allow the installation of the chosen lighting fixtures before the arena outer cover should be finished.
Custom metal brackets have been specifically engineered in order to fix to the metal structure of the arena over 1300 units of Griven Graph-i-Cell in RGB colour configuration. After fastening these pixel lighting units to the metal structure of the arena, their bodies have been partially recessed with the help of fibreglass sheets meant to hide the fixing system, leaving only the luminous dome of the products to be seen.
The rhombus intersections have been then covered with a thick-woven plastic mesh in order to convey a uniform, elegant appearance to the whole structure. In this way, at the conclusion of the works, the lighting fixtures not only were positioned according to the required lighting scheme, but were also ready for the relevant programming and testing.
An on-site programming schedule has been featured by Griven engineers, who went directly to Baku to make sure that everything should work perfectly for the upcoming European games. As a start up manager for this project, Alberto Fantoni of Griven's technical department, took personally care of this important phase, while Alessandro Pederzani, lighting designer at Griven, was in charge of the illumination study.
The installation layout was decided according to the illuminations scheme developed by Geiven's lighting designers: now each single pixel sparkles following a pre-defined pattern that makes the arena shine like a crown of moving diamonds in the night of Baku. The dynamic pixel effect is smooth, appealing and extraordinarily impressive. This newly shaped ambience has gained an exclusive and ultra modern outlook that will highlight the crown of Heydar Aliyev Sports and Exhibition Complex in a flawless, exciting manner during the European Games and beyond.
From 12 - 28 June 2015, Baku 2015 will be the highlight for millions of sport fans and the Heydar Aliyev Sports and Exhibition Complex will have its chance to be seen the world over with its crown of sparkling lights.
(Jim Evans)
