Professional Lighting & Production - Summer 2017 | Page 33

city
not in action. “We are really happy with that
design,” notes Lavoie. “We really had to do
a custom solution since we had to lift the
projectors, but also a sheet of marble, so there
was a lot of weight.”
In addition to the video content, there is
a complement of lighting fixtures to supple-
ment the atmosphere created by the more
central video and projection features. “Around
the main plaza, there was a panoply of RGB
Lumenpulse Lumen Beam Grande luminaires
that would light the area around the fountain,”
explains Garou Blancan, lighting specialist at
XYZ. “There were some white luminaires that
were used just for basic protocol lighting and
there were quite a bit of Martin Mac Quantum
Profiles and Martin Mac Quantum Washes, and
these were mainly utilized during the shows
for effects or gobos or beams moving around,
etc.” The programming for these fixtures was
done using Martin’s M-PC programming and
editing software. To keep the Martin fixtures
weatherproof, 21 of Tempest’s Tornado Series
moving light enclosures were used.
“The lighting is really programmed into the
show as an add-on and not as the show itself.
There is quite a bit of lighting inside the foun-
tain as well and I think that gives quite a nice
effect,” adds Blancan. The fountain lighting he
refers to was done with 100 custom sub-aquatic
RGBW LED spots supplied by Dubai-based
show fountain company Magical Water.
As far as content, the huge Gateway
screens are typically used for advertising while
the overhead LED screen strips and projection
along the Showstreet and in the plaza are
used to create ambiance. At night, when the
video, lighting, and projection are at their most
impactful, the three- to five-minute shows
play once an hour. The loose narrative of the
shows, created by Float4, is amplified by the
visual technology, as well as the Bose and
Meyer loudspeakers, to stimulate and create
an awe-inspiring experience.
“When it is a show, the people stay there;
they don’t move,” attests Cyr. “They’re really
meant to attract people and you can see when
the show starts, peopl e come from every-
where, every area, every alley, and then they
gather around the fountain.”
them working for us and to make sure that we
got the right information in time.
One example, says Cyr, is that the original
plan XYZ was given was for the projectors to
be installed on the overhead Diagrid, but they
learned the structure wasn’t strong enough to
safely support the added weight. “So then it
had to go on the building, but nobody wanted
to take the blame to say that the structure
cannot support it,” Cyr continues. “So we had
to push with the engineers to get a solution,
like, ‘If you do a platform here, you disperse the
weight,’ and it was a bit of struggling because
nobody wanted to take the risk.”
Despite the politics, the end result is exactly
what was hoped for: an awe-inspiring retail
environment that amazes and attracts locals
and visitors alike.
Thinking back to when Lavoie visited the
site after the mall had opened but before
the integration of the AV features, he recalls,
“When I asked the taxi driver to drive me there,
I asked him some questions, like, ‘How is this
mall? Is it good and is it well received?’ The
taxi driver told me, ‘Oh no, this is a very empty
space and nobody goes there. It’s very bad.’
Actually, when I went there, it was nice, but it
was empty,” Lavoie says. “And then we did the
project, we integrated the show and such…
and right now, I think every night it’s full and
packed. The main focus was to get people out-
side because when it’s hot in Dubai, it’s crazy
hot, so the idea of being outside and being
in a public space, that concept doesn’t exist
in Dubai. So this is a really nice concept and it
actually works pretty well because it’s full now;
it’s really a destination.”
Cyr, who remains in Dubai, backs up that
statement: “It doesn’t just attract expats and
tourists, but it also attracts the people that live
there. They are really amazed about the tech-
nology and all the integration. I travel a lot, and
there are not many shopping malls that have
that level of AV integrated in the architecture.”
In that sense, the City Walk seems perfectly
suited for Dubai.
Michael Raine is the Senior
Editor of Professional Lighting
& Production
As technically advanced as the City Walk proj-
ect is, Cyr and Lavoie both say that the biggest
challenge, aside from the 55-degree summer
heat in Dubai, was the tight schedule and
politics involved. “Since we were working with
Float4, our client was Meraas, but for the other
suppliers, the client was the MEP,” says Lavoie.
“They don’t answer to the same person, so
the chain of command was very hard for us to
say, ‘Hey, you need to do that,’ but at the same
time, he is not our supplier; he is a supplier of
MEP, so he doesn’t have to answer to us. So
that was kind of the hard way to have the in-
formation in time to make sure that the sched-
ule was also respected because we didn’t have
control of that schedule. I would say it was a
big struggle during the whole project to keep
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