Hall One, with a capacity of 1650, is the largest of the two concert halls and uses retractable acoustic curtains, as does Northern Rock Foundation Hall, whereas the unusual design of Hall Two called for acoustic banners. The fabric of choice for acoustic drapes and banners is wool serge which, constructed as a flat woven fabric, felts during the wet finishing process and so closes the natural air gaps created during the weaving. J & C Joel was selected to supply the fabric and manufacture a total of 153 drapes, which weighed in at an impressive 6.5 tons, for all performance and rehearsal spaces at The Sage Gateshead.
In Hall One, the curtains when deployed cover some 90% of the walls of the auditorium and the challenge for Theatre Projects Consultants was to find a way of storing them, in the minimum amount of space, behind the auditorium walls and so isolating their acoustic properties when not required. The solution was found with the Triple E Chaintrack system, which enables curtains to go around corners of just 40mm radius. The company responsible for the stage engineering equipment, Street CraneXpress, looked at two or three options but Chaintrack proved the best.
The acoustic curtains, the largest of which weighs 375kg and is 39.5m wide, with a drop of 5.8m, are stored in pockets behind the walls of the auditorium. David Edelstein, managing director of Triple E, explained: "The deployed length of the curtain is duplicated in the storage pockets but the track in the storage areas is formed into a series of short parallel tracks and, in the case of the largest curtains, spiral storage layouts. With the curtains at 50% fullness, as the largest ones travelled in opposite directions, they would have tangled." The answer was to design certain areas with a spiral stack, enabling the curtain to always travel in the same direction.
At the time that Theatre Projects Consultants wrote the specification, Chaintrack was a relatively new product and so they demanded that Triple E carry out simulated tests of the system, to ensure it could promise a working life of 20 years plus, something that David Edelstein was more than happy to do. "We were so confident that Chaintrack would meet all the demands made of it that the simulation actually ran for more than twice the number of cycles specified. The track received no attention other than adjustment to the chain tensioner."
A more detailed review of The Sage Gateshead appears in the February issue of Lighting&Sound International magazine.
(Lee Baldock)
