The city of Rennes sought to animate the front of the building in order to 'announce' the various activities going on inside the theatre. Lighting designer for the exterior illumination was Jean-François Touchard who, with his design team, worked directly with the city on the concept's details.
Touchard proposed an eight-hour per day lighting programme, from 5pm to 1am, in five phases: evening, theatre and cinema opening, beginning of play, during play, and, afterwards, when only the bar and restaurant is open.
"In the beginning, we wanted to light the building from the ground up, but the architect added an element that changed that plan," Touchard reports. "We then had to find a product that could achieve the same effect from the top and also be small enough that it didn't change the 'read' of the building. It also needed to be as precise as possible in order to avoid lighting up the sidewalk."
Martin Professional's new Exterior 200 LED was chosen and placed between the glass and the metallic structure of the building. "Because the Exterior 200 LED is stylishly slim, it can be tucked discreetly into architectural design details and requires minimal service and maintenance," adds Touchard.
"The colours needed for the programme were easy to create, especially the orange. Moreover, the Exterior 200 LED was the only one of all the products tested to project only vertical lines. All the other products also lit up horizontally with a prism effect. The power and the uniformity of the Exterior 200 LED's beam made the difference."
The luminaires, provided and installed by local company Spectaculaire, are located inside the building at the top of the façade and directed inward to light up the metallic structure. Lighting programming was done on Martin's PC-based LightJockey system and the lighting scheme is controlled via a DMX playback controller.
(Jim Evans)
