China - A team from Netherlands-based creative studio Live Legends recently completed a bold technical scheme for the Sir.Teen Group and their Club Been, a new venue and entertainment concept that has burst onto the highly competitive nightlife scene in Beijing, China. Headed by project director Serge Patist and lighting designers Thomas de Vries and Bas Knappers, the brief encompassed set, video, lighting and audio.
For the venue’s lighting design, over 250 Robe moving lights were selected, including 144 Spikies, 76 Viva CMYs and six T1 Profiles.
Other creatives involved in the project from Live Legends included Daan Oomen (creative director and principal designer), Stefan Peters (interior designer), Rik Schoutsen (video specialist), VFX artists Jim de Brouwer, Robbert Lubken and Boudewijn de Kraaij, plus music producers Joos van Leeuwen and Maarten Bokma.
Live Legends’ design was based on an industrial look, featuring square and cube shapes emulating RSJs (rolled steel joists) and concrete pillars with lines of lights that could intersect and create eye-catching Matrix-style effects with different beams and colours.
“We knew we needed small and powerful lights,” explains de Vries, adding that Live Legends has used these for numerous club installations. “They are small, bright, and the continuous rotation is ideal for club lightshows, while the flower effect adds an extra layer of interest.”
Club Been has a video screen upstage of the DJ booth along the back wall, while a large, automated, cube-shaped centrepiece rigged above the middle of the room features a screen that folds down from the ceiling, enclosing the DJ booth from the top – encasing them in a cube.
The building had previously operated as a club, but was completely reimagined according to the client’s brief for Club Been which called for a clean and contemporary environment.
For their collaboration on the lighting design, de Vries completed the drawings and visualisations, while Knappers did most of the programming, both in the studio and on-site in Beijing. They also created special lighting and visuals for the opening nights.
“We wanted long linear runs of lights that reinforced the cube theme and accented the space clearly, with an elegant demarcation,” de Vries explains.
The main room is around 30 x 30 metres square with some adjacent VIP areas, plus different bars around the space.
Both the Robe Spikies and the Viva CMYs ticked the ‘compact’ box and were a good match for the Been aesthetic, where all the visual elements are connected to ensure consistent branding.
Spikies are rigged in horizontal and vertical rows on the roof beams and can shoot in all directions through the space, with a quantity also positioned at floor level and around the DJ booth area onstage for contrast.
The Viva CMYs are primarily rigged on bars inside columns carved out from the concrete walls, with most of the fixture bodies hidden and only the front lenses visible, always in a line or a block shape in keeping with the cube theme. “They provide bright spots and beams left and right that can fill the space effectively with movement and colour,” explains de Vries. The main room is primarily filled with tables and there is a small dancefloor. For key lighting on the DJ and dancers, de Vries and Knappers specified six Robe T1 Profiles.
Club Been has remained a popular venue since opening, and all the signs indicate it will be the trailblazing destination the owners envisioned. De Vries concludes: “We have been involved in several designs and installations in China now, and it’s always a pleasure to work with our Chinese partner Sir.Teen Group, who are dedicated to providing their visitors with the very best creative experiences, production values and excellent music.”
