Located in Antwerp, Belgium, deSingel is the premier international arts centre for the Flanders region. Originally built in 1980, it was further expanded in 2007 to provide an extensive arts facility for theatre, dance, music and architecture.
It now encompasses a concert hall (Blue Hall) of 940 seats; a theatre/dance auditorium (Red Hall) of 800 seats; a 400m2 exhibition space; theatre workshops (small performance spaces); a dance studio and large rehearsal room.
It is home to the Study Centre for Flemish Music, the Royal Conservatory Antwerp, the Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui Dance Company, the Flemish Architecture Institute and the Flemish Art Institute.
A major refurbishment of the Red Hall was undertaken in 2017 to replace the 40-year-old electrical cabling and the 20-year-old dimming system and to expand the automated fly system. The replacement dimming system had to be on-site and ready for installation late in 2017. In addition, works were also carried out to improve the sprinkler system, catwalks, loading docks and stage access points.
deSingel contacted its main supplier network to scan the market for technically modern dimming systems that could handle conventional dimming requirements and provide the flexibility of DMX512-controlled switched power for intelligent lights.
LSC’s Belgian and Dutch distributor, Fairlight BV from Bemmel in the Netherlands, responded by sending a 12-channel portable GenVI dimmer from LSC for evaluation by deSingel technical staff.
“The initial testing was impressive, mainly due to the very quiet filament singing and the smooth dimming of all the fixtures we had in-house,” explained Lieven de Meyere, deSingel Technical Coordinator.
“We knew that LSC was close to releasing the Unity Installation Dimmer and we were prepared to conduct further tests with the new Unity when it became available,” he said.
LSC shipped the pre-release Unity dimmer direct to deSingel and with direct backup from LSC and technical support from Fairlight, deSingel took the decision to select a product in its final pre-release development for its dimming system.
The Red Hall refurbishment called for 480 channels of 16Amp output with the ability to seamlessly convert any channel from a dimmer to a TruPower switched output.
Through Fairlight BV, LSC supplied five Unity 96-channel racks; each rack with its own integrated power distribution; top entry field and mains supply wiring; hot swappable 12-channel power modules with RCBO protection; centralised configuration module with built-in touchscreen module and dual DMX512 and Art-Net/sACN data inputs.
In addition, deSingel requested a number of portable 12-channel dimmers for mobile use throughout the venues. The GenVI dimmer was chosen not only for its similar characteristics to the Unity dimmers but also for the future upgrade of remote configuration and reporting by LSC’s soon-to-be-released Houston X monitoring and control software.
“Our requirements were listened to by the technical team at Fairlight and LSC and this gave us the confidence to commit to a product that was, in essence, still being developed,” said Lieven.
“Many factors helped our decision-making process, mainly the quiet and smooth dimming technology; the fact that if the central processor failed, the dimmer modules still worked if DMX was connected; the TruPower function for selecting the channel output to be a dimmer or direct power; the robustness of the live plug and play of each unit within the rack and the quiet ventilation system for each rack. We are now looking forward to the new management system Houston X from LSC,” he added.