Todd Berling Design Inc was asked in November 2001 by Brookfield Properties to assess the damage to the venue's theatrical systems - rigging, lighting and audio. "Our original walkthrough was overwhelming. We got to the upper level to inspect what we thought was going to be the dimmer room and instead we found only the raised pad of the dimmer room by itself. There was no equipment left. It was as though someone had taken a giant butter knife and scraped the equipment off the top of the concrete pad. It was leaning in towards the street, still fairly structurally unsound and there was an inch or so of dirt and ash - a very fine powder - everywhere. It was extraordinary."
The dimmer room was gone, conduit connections had been severed and luminaires crushed. Fortunately for Berling and the Winter Garden, the task was made easier because the venue had begun a phase of systems renovation in December 2000. "We had been in the process of redesigning the lighting system and had done the design work in the summer of 2001 . . . We were about to go into bidding for that next phase right around 11 September, but instead in November we were doing an insurance assessment of what was salvageable. Had we not been involved previously, we would have had a really difficult time trying to map the original system after 9/11. It would have been an unrecognisable puzzle."
Berling Design began by recreating circuitry in the locations that had been there in the original plan. The massive bond beam (a mechanical level around which all of the lighting fixtures are hung in the space), at the 65ft level of the building with 102 lighting circuits around the perimeter, was replaced. A set of 102 ETC Source Four luminaires, supplied by Barbizon Electric, took the place of the luminaires that had been destroyed. Berling chose a mix of 19º, 10º and 5º Source Fours profiles for optimum lighting punch and imaging.
As part of Brookfield Properties' Arts and Events Program, a portable stage is erected at the west end of the atrium, transforming the space into a full performance venue. In order to optimise the new entertainment lighting system, Berling put in an additional 48 circuits at the west end to allow for drop boxes and multi-cable breakouts down to trusses, which had never been available before. A supplementary rig, including 36 Source Fours, provided by dealer Fourth Phase, gives the new stage more creative lighting possibilities.
The Winter Garden had no DMX distribution system, so Berling installed a new Ethernet-based lighting control network throughout the whole building. "The new ETCNet2 system comprises nine DMX nodes located at each of the bays around the lighting bond beam and four portable nodes for distribution down to portable lighting trusses and sidelighting booms. We also have remote focusing capability [via an ETC Expression Remote Focus Unit] in every one of the bays up on the upper level, which they never had before."
For distribution up and around the bond beam on the atrium perimeter, Berling specified a series of 93 custom ETC network faceplates. Besides power access, some of these contain ETCNet2 DMX Nodes and Remote Focus Unit connectors, allowing further control over both scrollers and moving lights. All luminaires in the atrium space are run t
