SUMMER | FEATURE
LUCID realisations
LUCID activated two compelling constructions over
one weekend at Parklife and Field Day
LUCID at Field Day Festival 2019
Kent and London-based design and fabrication
company LUCID worked closely with Outer Insight
agency to realise and build an immersive BULLDOG
Gin brand activation (pictured above) for festival
revellers at this year’s Field Day festival.
The immersive branded arena, built using sea
containers, housed a bar, an interactive immersive
experience, a DJ platform, VIP viewing platform and
seating area. The likes of Denis Sulta, DJ Haii and
many more brought epic dance music to the arena
which was packed by close on Saturday evening.
Helen Swan and Chris Carr, co-directors of
LUCID, and their team create and build structures
and spaces designed for immersion. “Global and
Field Day asked us to come up with a design for
their fourth stage, in collaboration with BULLDOG
Gin. It needed to complement and incorporate
Bulldog’s strong brand identity without feeling like
a brand activation that had been crowbarred onto
site,” explains Swan. The BULLDOG Gin Yard arena
was created by layered black shipping containers
highlighted with the minimalist BULLDOG logo.
It was not without its creative challenges. Helen
explains: “Field Day’s audiences are super-media
savvy and it was imperative that the design we
created had authenticity as an arena and stage in its
own right and didn’t feel like a brand activation. By
working with the minimalism of the BULLDOG logo
combined with black shipping containers which
echoed the industrial nature of the Field Day site, we
created a space that had it own identity beyond the
brand without losing the brand awareness.”
Creative inspiration was drawn from the raw
industrial interior of the Drum Sheds and its
surroundings on the Field Day festival site in
Meridian Water, North London. Swan says: “We
love how Broadwick Live have retained the original
features of the warehouses and used similar
materials that reflected the original use of the Drum
Sheds and the Field Day site to create the BULLDOG
Gin Yard.”
“The feedback we received was overwhelming. It
was raving all weekend and the DJs loved the booth
overlooking the arena. BULLDOG, Global and Field
Day all loved the arena and BULLDOG will now
continue to use that container bar at a number of
forthcoming events,” says Swan.
LUCID build ‘The Valley’ at Parklife Festival
LUCID returned for a second year to design
and build the newly iconic The Valley at Parklife
Festival (on the left page) 2019. Four times the size
of the previous year, the fabrication company used
innovative engineering and design techniques to
build the dystopian cityscape structure by building
in a modular way so that the stages could be
built quickly on site and can be reused year after
year. This year’s line up on The Valley, hosted by
Disclosure, included the likes of Nas, Mark Ronson,
Kaytranada, Annie Mac, Denis Sulta, DJ Koze, Honey
Dijon and Sally C.
Parklife asked LUCID to design and build an
iconic new stage with integrated lighting and video.
The Valley was a life-size tower block complex
influenced by brutalist architecture and dystopian
fiction, consisting of the 100m wide by 22m high
stage, a 50m brutalist bar and a two-storey Pepsi
factory doubling as a viewing platform.
Every window in the eight life-size tower blocks
that make up the cityscape of the stage is an LED
screen featuring moving silhouettes of the people
living in the towers whilst the billboard screens
continuously show futuristic public service
announcements and adverts.
LUCID designed and created every inch of the set,
from developing an eight-layer process to turn ply
flats into hyper-realistic aged concrete, to making
and programming the on-screen content and LED
lighting. All three of the structures comprising The
Valley had to be constructed onsite at the Parklife
festival grounds within 10 days. This included
leaving enough time for Disclosure to run through
their programming with LUCID’s lighting design
team. LUCID developed a modular frame and
bracket system that allowed them to get set up at
height, with speed, and without crane lifts where
none were available.
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