SUMMER | FEATURE
Alicia Tkacz
“ Timber is structural , and it provides a beautiful finish , but then there is the sustainability part as well . We have built an inherently sustainable structure because of the material but also the fact it can be taken apart and used again . There ’ s the carbon footprint of moving it but that is offset by reusing materials rather than building another one from scratch somewhere else .”
Ric Lipson
Party time The Platinum Party At The Palace saw an events industry , which only a year previously had been prevented from operating at all , unite to produce a technically brilliant show that was met with a rave response from the public and media alike . Among the many eye-catching elements were Skymagic ’ s remarkable drone show , the stunning Buckingham Palace projections by Creative Technologies and Stufish ’ s three-platform stage design .
“ Once the [ ABBA Arena ] is taken down , we can give the land back pretty much as we found it .”
Stufish partner Ric Lipson worked closely with a BBC Studios team led by creative director Claire Popplewell , line producer Caroline Lloyd and live TV & event producer Mark Sidaway .
“ We were tasked by Claire to think out of the box ,” he says . “ We went to the site on a very grey day and even then the spectacle of the palace gates was breathtakingly beautiful . We thought , ‘ that is the background , how do we frame it ?’.”
The inspiration soon came , and Lipson swiftly got on the phone to Star Live creative director Roger Barrett to see if they had suitable structures available . The resulting design involved three stages , the first designed as a catwalk around the Queen Victoria Monument , with the other two positioned in front of the palace railings . While one hosted rock and pop acts , the other was dedicated to orchestral performances .
“ We had a limited budget and the design became about not building big ,” says Lipson . “ The covered areas were much smaller than a traditional festival stage roof . That meant we had to take all of the seats and the backstage area and put it underneath the floor in order to maximise the stage space while exposing as much of the palace and the gates as possible .”
He says the team was able to make a stage set up that appeared to be a custom structure but in reality was far from it : “ It was a lot of scaffolding and off-the-shelf truss that was clad in a very clever way with fabric , and skinned with a lot of white painted plywood .
“ We had 70 columns around the site representing the 70 years . They were just bits of truss , but they were wrapped in a nice fabric and on the Queen Victoria Monument stage they were wrapped in LED . They provided a holistic continuity to the design and allowed us to frame the gates .”
Lipson is understandably pleased with the results and the reaction from the public . He says , “ The honour of designing a show in front of Buckingham Palace is not something we get to do every day . People didn ’ t expect us to do something as meaningful as it became for a lot of people . It was a great event and a landmark moment , with everyone back together .”
Platinum Jubilee
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