Stockholm congress centre chooses Robe
- Details
The venue owns a substantial amount of rigging and production technology and has a full-time staff of 25 riggers, overseen - together with crew from all the other technical departments - by head of production Fredrik Zetterberg.
Over the last two years Stockholmsmässan has invested in 48 Robe moving lights - 36 x VIVAs and 12 x DL4S profiles, specified by Fredrik.
When he took up the post six years ago, his predecessor had identified the need for and had made the first steps towards purchasing their own moving lights to give them a fully flexible in-house lighting rig to support the diversity of shows and events being staged.
Fredrik followed through on this and specified that these should be Robe. His choice of brand was based on his many years’ experience of touring.
The first thing he actually did once appointed at the venue was to buy a substantial amount of trussing and ensure that a comprehensive rigging infrastructure was in place, after which they started looking at the best options for lighting.
Fredrik and his team used the 2016 LLB expo (a trade show for audio, video and lighting), as an opportunity to light the main bar area with a selection of different Robe fixtures, giving the chance to see and try out a few options in situ.
From this, a more refined moving light wish-list emerged which had an LED source requirement right at the top.
“Fixtures are on 10 hours a day or more for shows and we needed economical and green to run lighting,” stated Fredrik, adding that, given the pressure and quick turnover of their workload in getting exhibitions in and out, it made sense to have fixtures with as few mechanical parts as possible needing cleaning and maintenance.
As well as numerous expositions which include The Furniture Fair that utilises around 3000m of trussing and 3000 lights and an annual car / motorcycle show that consumes 3000 plus points and keeps a rigging crew of 70-80 working around the clock, Stockholmsmässan services a host of gala dinners, awards shows, bands and music TV shows.
For all these extracurricular type of events, they need to be able to pattern and texture different fabric dressing making up the bar and cafe areas and soft goods with lighting effects. “VIVA is a really impressive choice and great for these special tasks,” states Fredrik.
(Jim Evans)
